On January 19, U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin Drain issued this order in the lawsuit over straight-ticket voting, which is Michigan State A. Philip Randolph Institute v Johnson, e.d., 2:16cv-11844. The case is over whether the U.S. Constitution requires Michigan to keep the straight-ticket device, even though the legislature repealed it in early 2016. The plaintiffs argue that eliminating the device injures African-American voters.

The order says that the state’s attempt to dismiss the case fails, and that a trial will be needed to gather evidence. Pages 20-21 mentions the party logo (“vignette”) as a reason to keep the straight-ticket device. It is strange that the judge mentioned the logo, because logos were repealed in 2017 by HB 4177. Perhaps the state’s briefs have never told the judge about this change in the law.

It is unfortunate that no one has told the judge that straight-ticket voting is very harmful to independent candidates. The state doesn’t seem to be interested in making that argument, and no one has intervened in the case on behalf of independent candidates. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.

On January 19, attorneys for the Colorado Secretary of State filed this nine-page brief in Baca v Colorado Department of State, 1:17cv-1937. This is the lawsuit over whether presidential electors have a right to vote for anyone for president who meets the constitutional qualifications, or whether they must vote for the person who received the most popular votes in their state.

Colorado claims the plaintiffs don’t have standing, but to support that contention, it relies on precedents that say local governments can’t sue their state governments, and state legislators can’t sue state governments, in federal court.

Colorado also claims that the Twelfth Amendment, passed in 1804, was intended to make sure that the electors “carried out the desires of the people.” This seems obviously incorrect, because in the 1804 presidential election, the first election conducted under the Twelfth Amendment, six states did not have a popular vote to choose presidential electors (out of 17 states in the union at the time).

The Florida Constitution Revision Commission has the power to put proposed constitutional changes on the November 2018 ballot. According to this story, the part of the Commission that studies election law changes is recommending one change in Florida’s closed primary. Currently if members of only one party file for a particular partisan office, then that party’s primary for that office is open to all registered voters. The change would say an election is deemed to have candidates from only one party, even if there is a write-in candidate in the general election for that particular office.

Florida has a huge proportion of partisan races with candidates from only one party. That is because Florida has such severe filing fees, twice as high as any other state’s filing fees (6% of the office annual salary; Georgia is second with 3% of the salary). In many of these one-party elections, someone who is in league with the party will file as a write-in candidate, thus closing the primary for that particular office to only party members. Public hostility toward this trick is motivating the Revision Commission to change the law to ignore write-ins for the purpose of determining whether a primary is closed or open.

According to the story, the Commission is not recommending converting all Florida primaries from closed to semi-closed. A semi-closed primary is one in which independent voters can choose a primary ballot.