On June 19, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless v Husted, 16-1068. The Ohio Democratic Party had been a co-plaintiff along with the Coalition. The case concerns a federal law passed in 1870, 52 USC 10101(a)(2)(B). It says documents enabling someone to vote must be honored even if they contain an error that is not material. That provision is now part of the federal voting rights act.

The legal issue in the Ohio case is who can enforce the law. The issue arose because in 2014, the Ohio legislature passed a law that disqualifies absentee and provisional ballots if any slight error exists in the outer envelope for that ballot. For instance, one of the plaintiffs had her absentee ballot rejected because she made a one-digit error when she listed her social security number. The plaintiffs believe such strict rules violate the federal law, but the Sixth Circuit ruled that no one can enforce the federal law except a government official. By contrast, the Eleventh Circuit had ruled some years ago that anyone can file a lawsuit to enforce the federal law.

On June 18, France held run-off elections for the National Assembly. The first round had been a week ago. Here is a news story with the results. The President’s party, La Republique En Marche, which was running in its first election ever, apparently won 355 of the 577 seats.

The Militant, weekly newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, can now be seen on-line for all issues 1946 through the present. See this link. In the near future, the issues from 1928 through 1945 will also be posted.

The Militant is the only printed weekly newspaper published by a U.S. political party. Most parties that still have print publications only publish once per month, or less frequently.

Between 1969 and 1980, the Socialist Workers Party was the most active party in the U.S. challenging restrictive ballot access laws in court. The issues of The Militant for those years are a valuable resource for anyone researching the history of the fight against such ballot access laws. Leaders of the Socialist Workers Party established a separate pressure group called CoDel (Committee for Democratic Election Laws) to gain support for these lawsuits. Such lawsuits won against various laws in Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia.

The Socialist Workers Party has had more election law cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court than any other minor party.