On August 12, a New York state court ruled that the Women’s Equality Party is ballot-qualified. See this story from Michael Drucker’s Independent View. Here is a link to the decision, Tamburlin v Peterson, Niagara County Supreme Court, case 156326.
In 2014, the New Hampshire legislature made it a crime for anyone to photograph his or her marked ballot and then show the picture to anyone else. On August 11, a U.S. District Court Judge struck down the law on the grounds that there is no evidence that the law is needed to provent bribery of voters. Rideout v Gardiner, 14-cv-489. Here is the 42-page opinion.
The opinion says the state is still free to make it illegal for anyone to pay anyone else to vote a certain way. The lead plaintiff is a state Representative who had opposed the law when it passed. Representative Leon Rideout deliberately took a picture of his own September 2014 primary ballot while he was in the voting booth, and then later he showed the picture to others. He was then threatened with prosecution but he was not actually prosecuted. A few other plaintiffs had also taken pictures of their ballots and posted them to social media without realizing they were breaking the law.
The state tried to argue that a voted ballot is government speech, but the decision says that argument is obviously wrong. The opinion depends partly on the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court opinion Reed v Town of Gilbert, the Arizona case that struck down laws that treated different types of sign differently depending on their content.
Attempts to keep voters from showing anyone their voted ballots are virtually hopeless, because so many states now permit voting by mail. Obviously when someone is filling out a ballot at home and then mailing it back to the elections office, it is impossible to enforce a principle that no one can ever show anyone else their voted ballot. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
The Montana Republican Party is suing to prevent members of other parties from voting in its primaries. Briefs in the case, Ravalli County Republican Central Committee v McCulloch, will be filed with the U.S. District Court on this schedule: both sides will file by September 18, 2015; rebuttals will be filed by October 23.
Charles Lane, veteran opinion writer for the Washington Post, has this column, “Are we headed for a 4-party moment?” He suggests the diversity of opinion in the U.S. is greater than in the recent past. He contrasts the present period to the 1850’s and also 1948. Thanks to Henry Hirose for the link.
On August 12, James Tyson Parker filed his opening brief in his ballot access lawsuit, Parker v Duran, 15-2088. The issue is the New Mexico law that requires independent candidates to submit a petition of 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, whereas minor party nominees (for office other than President) only need a petition of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote. Parker collected enough signatures under the minor party standard, but because he was an independent candidate, that wasn’t good enough and he was kept off the ballot last year. He had been running for Public Education Commission, a partisan office.
Because Parker didn’t get on the ballot, there was only one candidate on the ballot in November for that office, a Democrat who was only required to get 272 signatures to get on the primary ballot. Parker needed 2,196 signatures and submitted 1,379. A minor party nominee would have needed 732. The U.S. District Court had upheld the law.
