On October 10, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Martin v Moore, 17-156. This is the case in which the Eighth Circuit had said the March petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidate petitions is too early, unless the state of Arkansas can demonstrate that the deadline is essential for the state to have enough time to check the validity of such petitions.

Arkansas state officials had then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the Eighth Circuit, and uphold the March petition deadline. Arkansas’ main argument in the U.S. Supreme Court had been that the plaintiff-candidate, Mark Moore, had not tried to petition and therefore he doesn’t have standing.

It will be interesting to see if the state now returns to the U.S. District Court and tries to prove that it can’t check the signatures unless they are submitted by March, or whether the state just gives up on the case. The Arkansas legislature is not in session but it will be in January 2018.

On October 9, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina vetoed SB 656, the bill that greatly improves ballot access. However, his veto message says he vetoed it because of an unrelated provision affecting judicial primaries. There is some possibility that the legislature’s conference committee could meet again, delete the judicial part of the bill, and send it through the legislature again.

On October 6, the Seventh Circuit agreed with the U.S. District Court, that Illinois does not violate the U.S. Constitution by requiring the state house nominees of unqualified parties to submit a petition of 5% of the last vote cast, to get on the general election ballot. Tripp v Scholz, 16-3469. Here is the 27-page opinion. The case had been filed by the Green Party in 2014.

The two plaintiff-candidates each needed approximately 2,400 valid signatures. The court felt that it is not that difficult to collect that number of signatures in the 90-day window the law requires. The party also complained about the need to notarize the signatures, but the court said a circulator is free to make a single trip to a notary public and have all his or her sheets notarized at the same time. The party also complained that some state house districts lack any population centers (or else that if there were any population centers, the district boundaries bisected such towns), but the court noted that Harrisburg, Illinois, is entirely within one of the districts, and it has a population of 9,000.

The decision is by Judge Joel Flaum, a Reagan appointee. It was also signed by Judges Diana Sykes, a Bush Jr. appointee, and William Bauer, a Ford appointee.