On February 22, Arkansas election officials filed a new appeal in Moore v Martin, the case over the Arkansas petition deadline for non-presidential candidates. The Eighth Circuit last year said the March petition deadline was too early, unless the state could prove that it couldn’t check the validity of the signatures unless the deadline was that early.

Afterwards, the U.S. District Court held a trial, and after a witness for state government admitted on the stand that the state could cope with a later petition deadline, the U.S. District Court struck down that deadline. But now the state wants the Eighth Circuit to reverse that decision.

The same deadline was declared unconstitutional in 1975, and again in 1977, and in 1977 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that decision. The legislature moved the deadline to May, but later forgot why it had done that, and moved it to January. In 1988 that deadline was again declared unconstitutional. It was again moved to May, but once more the legislature forgot why it had done that, and moved it to March.

A U.S. District Court will hear Rhodes v Snyder, e.d., 2:17cv-14186, on March 29 at 1:30 pm in Detroit. This is the case over whether the U.S. Constitution requires Michigan to hold a special U.S. House election earlier than November 2018. The 13th district seat formerly occupied by John Conyers has been vacant since last year.

On February 22, Rocky De La Fuente, an independent presidential candidate in 2016, won his lawsuit against a Washington state law that requires petitioning candidates for president to publish a notice in a newspaper, in each county in which the petition will be circulated, at least ten days in advance of beginning to petition. De La Fuente v Wyman, w.d., 3:16cv-5801. De La Fuente had been kept off the Washington ballot in 2016 because of this law, even though he submitted the required 1,000 signatures of registered voters. Here is the 13-page decision. The decision is by Judge Benjamin H. Settle, a Bush Jr. appointee.

The decision says the burden of running the notices is slight, but still strikes down the law because it does restrict voting rights to some extent and the state couldn’t show that the law is needed for any rational purpose. The decision says, “The present case illustrates how a minor party or independent candidate may be capable of mustering what the State considers to be a significant modicum of support — in this case the signed petitions of over 1,000 registered voters — yet still be excluded from the ballot for failing to give notice.”

The real harm the law does is effectively make the filing deadline earlier. Already Washington state had one of the earliest presidential independent petition deadlines (July 23) and the 10-day publication law make this deadline realistically July 13. Late-announcing candidates like Evan McMullin (who didn’t declare until August 8, 2016) are the type of candidate the law injured.

This is the first constitutional ballot access case any minor party or independent candidate has won in Washington since 2004, when the Libertarian Party won a decision in state court against the old law that required a minor party or independent candidate to poll at least 1% of the vote in the blanket primary. That win lost all significance after Washington state abandoned the blanket primary afterwards.