On March 27, U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker, an Obama appointee, ruled that the U.S. Constitution requires Florida to have objective standards to determine which ex-felons may regain their voting rights. Hand v Scott, n.d., 4:17cv-128. Here is the 22-page decision.
Currently, the Governor of Florida has unfettered discretion to restore voting rights for any ex-felon, but there are no rules for how the Governor makes decisions. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
On March 27, State Senator Robert Krist asked a U.S. District Court to dismiss his challenge to the 10% petition requirement for non-presidential independents that the Nebraska legislature passed in 2016. He had filed the lawsuit when he expected to be an independent candidate for Governor. But then he decided instead to seek the Democratic nomination.
Even if he had not voluntarily dismissed his lawsuit, he probably would have lost on standing. His dismissal reserves the right for him to challenge the requirement in the future. Also, of course, any other independent candidate is free to challenge it. The precedents are unanimous that states cannot require independent candidates to collect the signatures of 10% of the number of registered votes. Those precedents are from Ohio, Illinois, Arkansas, and North Carolina.
On March 27, the North Carolina State Board of Elections unanimously voted that the Green Party is a ballot-qualified party. This is because the 2017 law said that any party whose presidential nominee was on the ballot in at least 35 states in the previous election is a qualified party. The reason it took so long for the Board to recognize the Green Party is that there were no members of the Board (owing to a dispute between the Governor and the legislature) until last week. Thanks to Mark Henkle for this news.
On March 17, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly, a Clinton appointee, refused to dismiss the lawsuit Gonzales v Madigan, n.d., 16C-7915. The plaintiff, Jason Gonzales, had run in the 2016 Democratic primary against incumbent Democratic speaker Michael J. Madigan. Madigan’s district has become a majority Hispanic district over the years. According to the Complaint, which was filed in 2016, Madigan feared being defeated by Gonzales in the primary, so Madigan recruited two more Democratic candidates with Hispanic surnames, allegedly to divide the vote of voters who wished to vote for someone with a Hispanic surname.
One might think there is no basis for a lawsuit, and that whether Madigan’s action was unethical or not, it wasn’t illegal. However, there is a 1974 precedent from the Seventh Circuit that says it is illegal when there is a conspiracy. That decision was Smith v Cherry, 489 F.2d 1098. Illinois is in the Seventh Circuit, so it is binding on Illinois.
Therefore, the case will now have a trial to determine if Madigan did conspire to recruit two candidates into his 2016 primary. Here is the short decision in Gonzales v Madigan, saying the case is not being dismissed. That part of the decision is toward the end. The first half deals with whether Gonzales can sue Madigan for defamation (Gonzales lost on that issue).
Thomas Elias, who writes about politics for approximately a dozen California daily newspapers, here has a column mentioning the initiative that has been filed for circulation to switch from a top-two system to a top-four system.
