On January 18, the Illinois Libertarian Party filed this brief in the Seventh Circuit in its lawsuit against the unique Illinois law that requires newly-qualifying parties to file a full slate of candidates. The U.S.District Court last year struck the law down, and the state is appealing.
On the evening of January 17, the Kansas Senate passed HB 2017 unanimously. It improves ballot access in special U.S. House elections. It lowers the number of signatures for an independent from 4% of the number of registered voters (approximately 17,000 signatures) to exactly 3,000 signatures. It also allows ballot-qualified parties that nominate by convention to participate in the election.
See this story.
On January 17, the Virginia Senate Privileges & Elections Committee passed SB 1236, which lowers the number of signatures for statewide candidates in both the primary and the general election from 10,000 signatures to 5,000. The vote was 5-4, with one abstention. Thanks to Nicholas Cote for this news.
Currently the presidential petitions are 5,000, but all the other statewide candidate petitions are 10,000.
On January 17, attorneys for the state of Hawaii filed this brief in Democratic Party of Hawaii v Nago, 16-652. The Democratic Party of Hawaii does not want to be forced to nominate its candidates in an open primary, because the party believes that persons hostile to the party are voting in its primary. There is no way to know which voters choose to vote in the Hawaii Democratic Party. The lower federal courts refused any relief to the party because the party didn’t present concrete evidence that is being harmed. The party then asked to U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
The state’s brief argues that the Court should not hear this case for procedural reasons.
A lawsuit is currently pending in U.S. District Court in Colorado over the law that requires presidential electors to vote in the electoral college for the candidate who received the most popular votes in Colorado. It had been filed last year by two Democratic presidential electors who wanted to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton. The two electors did not receive injunctive relief, but they hope to eventually win declaratory relief, or at least to settle the issue for future presidential elections.
On January 12, the Colorado Secretary of State asked the court to be relieved from the discovery process. The electors want information about the Secretary of State’s press release issued the date the lawsuit had been filed; they want information about the Secretary of State’s efforts to re-word the oath that presidential electors must take just prior to voting; and they want information about the Secretary of State’s referral of a third Democratic presidential elector, Michael Baca, for prosecution (Baca is not a plaintiff, but when the electors voted at the state capitol, he cast a ballot for Bernie Sanders; he was then ejected as an elector).
The state says it would be burdensome to produce all the records. The state also says that if discovery goes forward and Michael Baca is deposed, he may possibly plead the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify. This argument seems far-fetched. From what is known about Michael Baca, a champion of freedom for presidential electors to vote for any qualified candidate, it seems very likely he would be in favor of letting discovery proceed.
The plaintiffs have not yet responded to the motion for discovery.
