Here is the Yahoo News story about the February 1 ruling in Level the Playing Field v FEC. Here is a story from IVN.
Here is one that ran both on Buzz Feed and Tech Featured. Thanks to Dave Gillespie for that one.
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On February 1, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, a Clinton appointee, ruled that the California Secretary of State did not violate the First Amendment when he censored Paul Merritt’s candidate statement in the Voters Guide. The Voters Guide is a publication mailed to every registered voter. Candidates for partisan office may pay to have a statement about themselves. The law does not restrict the content, except to say the statement must not discuss any opponents of the candidate.
In the 2016 U.S. Senate primary, Paul Merritt, who was on the ballot, wrote a statement that started with his name and “registered independent voter”. But the Secretary of State refused to print “registered independent voter” in the statement, and changed it to “no party preference” without even telling Merritt. Generally when the state objects to something in the Guide, there are procedures to inform the candidate and work with the candidate. But Merritt didn’t even learn his statement had been changed until he received his copy of the Guide in the postal mail.
Judge Carter wrote that because independent candidates are not permitted to be labelled “independent” on the ballot, therefore it follows that they cannot call themselves “independent” in the candidate statement either. The state had tried to defend its decision by differentiating between the opening line of the statement, and the body of the statement. But Judge Carter’s six-page opinion takes no note of that, and implies the state could have censored the body of the statement as well as the heading.
Judge Carter overlooked a Ninth Circuit decision from 2002, Rubin v City of Santa Monica. That was a dispute over whether a candidate could use the occupation “peace activist” as his occupation (California prints occupations of candidates on the ballot). Although Rubin lost the case, the decision said that if he didn’t have the ballot label he wanted, he at least had the freedom to express that label in his candidate ballot statement in the Voters Guide.
Judge Carter did recognize there might be a due process violation by the Secretary of State’s refusal to even tell Merritt what he had done before doing it, so he granted permission to Merritt to amend his complaint to keep that part of his lawsuit alive. The decision is Merritt v Padilla, c.d., 8:16cv-606.
On February 1, the New Hampshire House Elections Committee defeated HB 240, which would have required qualified parties to hold their state convention in the latter half of September or in October, in election years.
The committee also passed HB 390, which slightly alters some voter registration forms and applications for an absentee ballot. Existing law specifies the wording on such forms, and in places the law simply assumes that the Democratic and Republican Parties will forever be the only qualified parties, and names them specifically. The bill says the forms in the future should acknowledge that another qualified party may also exist. Thank to Darryl Perry for this news.
On February 1, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued a 28-page opinion in Level the Playing Field v Federal Election Commission, 1:15cv-1397, D.C. She ruled that the FEC clearly did not look at the evidence presented by the plaintiffs Peter Ackerman, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and Level the Playing Field. The evidence is voluminous and shows that the Commission on Presidential Debates, and particular commissioners, are not non-partisan when they act to keep all presidential candidates (except for the Democratic and Republican nominees) out of the general election debates.
The decision says that when the FEC refused to investigate the behavior of the Commission on Presidential Debates, it did not even acknowledge the evidence, nor did it explain why it is disregarding the evidence. Here are a few samples of the evidence mentioned in the decision: a quotation from Alan Simpson, a Commissioner for the Commission on Presidential Debates, who said, “Democrats and Republicans on the commission are interested in the American people finding out more about the two major candidates — not about independent candidates who mess things up.” Also, Commissioner John Lewis said, “There’s no question that the two major parties have absolute control of the presidential debate process.” Commissioner Newt Minow said, “The responsibility for the debates should rest with the political system — with the Democratic and Republican Parties.”
The decision orders the FEC to reconsider the complaint against the CPD within sixty days. The decision says that the judge will not now order the FEC to change its debates ruling, and that the FEC now has a second opportunity to give the complaint the attention it deserves.
Two of the six FEC commissioners already voted to act on the complaint, so it is not difficult to imagine that the FEC will take the hint and revise its earlier ruling that the CPD is not breaking the campaign finance laws.
On February 1, the Utah Senate unanimously passed SB 13, which, among other things, moves the petition deadline for a newly-qualifying party from February 15 of the election year, to November 30 of the year before the election. The Senate did slightly amend that deadline, from November 15 to November 30, in response to complaints that a petition deadline in the year before an election is far too early.
Because the Senate amended the bill, it now returns to the House.