U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila, who is handling the California lawsuit over whether presidential electors must vote for the candidates they are expected to vote for, wants all the briefs filed by December 14. The case is Koller v Brown, in the northern district. Davila is an Obama appointee.
The New York Times has this editorial in its December 12, 2016 edition, supporting a proposed New York bill that would bar candidates from the ballot if they don’t release their income tax returns before the election. This would clearly be unconstitutional under the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court opinion U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, which says that neither states nor congress can add to the qualifications to run for federal office.
The editorial quotes legal scholar Laurence Tribe as saying, “Ballot access requirements vary significantly from state to state, and it seems that New York might be able to simply add tax disclosure as a procedural ballot access requirement.”
On December 12, a U.S. District Court Judge in Colorado ruled from the bench that he would not grant any relief to two Colorado Democratic presidential electors who say they may want to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton. The ruling so far is oral only, and has not been put in writing. Thanks to the Election Law Blog for the news. According to this story, one of the Democrats says he still isn’t going to vote for the ticket that he was expected to vote for.
On December 12, U.S. District Court Judge Karen Schreier ruled that the Libertarian and Constitution Parties of South Dakota will be able to amend their complaint in their ballot access case that was filed in 2015. This will enable the case to proceed. The issue now is whether a March petition deadline is constitutional for a newly-qualifying party that wants to have nominees for Congress, state legislature, and Governor. Libertarian Party of South Dakota v Krebs, 4:15cv-4111.
New Hampshire is one of the states that allows write-in votes for president in the general election, but doesn’t have a procedure for a presidential write-in candidate to file a declaration of write-in candidacy. In recent past presidential elections, the Secretary of State has rather arbitrarily decided which candidates to tally. For instance, in November 2012, he tallied write-ins for Jill Stein and Ron Paul (who was not a declared candidate in the general election), but no one else.
This year, he tallied write-ins for any presidential candidate who requested a tally. However, many bona fide presidential candidates who were not on the New Hampshire ballot didn’t realize that if they asked for a tally, they could get one. That is why the Secretary of State tallied write-ins for Evan McMullin, but not candidates such as Darrell Castle. McMullin received 1,064 write-ins in New Hampshire.
In 2016 the Secretary of State also tallied write-ins for certain people who had run in the presidential primaries this year, but were not candidates in November and did not request a write-in tally: Bernie Sanders 4,493; John Kasich 1,365; Jeb Bush 230; Marco Rubio 136; Ted Cruz 129; Rand Paul 98; Ben Carson 83; Vermin Supreme 58; and Chris Christie 23. And he tallied write-ins for these prominent persons who did not run in any presidential primaries this year: Mike Pence 937; Mitt Romney 540; Paul Ryan 280; John McCain 127; and Joe Biden 55.
The failure to count write-ins for Darrell Castle seems unfair, because Castle filed a declaration of candidacy to get on the ballot, but didn’t appear because his petition didn’t have enough valid names. He was the only person who filed a declaration of candidacy to get on the ballot but whose petition was rejected.
