On May 30, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Ohio’s appeal in Husted v A. Philip Randolph Institute, 16-980. The issue is how to interpret the federal law that forbids states from removing voters from the rolls unless they skip two federal elections in a row, and don’t respond to a state questionaire.
Ohio sends the questionaire after a voter has missed voting for a period of two years. The Sixth Circuit had ruled that Ohio’s interpretation of the federal law is erroneous.
According to this story, at the very end, the British Columbia New Democratic Party and Green Party have agreed that the voters of British Columbia will vote in autumn 2018 on whether to use proportional representation. Because those two parties, together, have a slight majority in the new legislature, their plan for the upcoming referendum is likely to implemented.
The Green Party had wanted the province to switch to proportional representation without a vote of the people, but apparently the party has yielded on that desire.
On May 26, Level the Playing Field, Peter Ackerman, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein filed this amended complaint, asking that the court order the Federal Election Commission to require the Commission on Presidential Debates to revise its debate invitation criteria. The case is Level the Playing Field v FEC, U.S. District Court, D.C., 1:15cv-1397. Thanks to IVN for this news.
On May 25, some Georgia voters filed a state court lawsuit against the Georgia Secretary of State, seeking an order that the government use paper ballots for the upcoming June 20 special U.S. House election. Georgia uses vote-counting machines that do not have an audit trail. The case is Curling v Kemp, Superior Court, Fulton County, 2017cv-290630. A hearing is set for June 7 at 10 a.m.
There has been prior litigation in Georgia against the vote-counting equipment. So far none of them has succeeded.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to grant a stay in Gill v Whitford, 16-1161, at its Thursday, June 8 conference. This is the case in which the lower 3-judge U.S. District Court determined that the Wisconsin legislative district boundaries constitute an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
The U.S. Supreme Court wants the opponents of the gerrymander to file a brief on June 7, and then the Court will decide whether the state must now implement a new districting plan, or whether the state can delay that until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether the lower court was correct.
