On December 21, the Hawaii Democratic Party asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Democratic Party of Hawaii v Nago. This is the case in which the Democratic Party argues that it cannot be forced to choose its nominees in a primary in which any voter is free to choose any party’s primary ballot. The U.S. District Court, and the Ninth Circuit, had both ruled that the party’s lawsuit fails because there is no evidence that the open primary injures the party. Here is the cert petition.
The party argues that it is virtually impossible to prove the harm. On primary day each voter’s decision as to which primary ballot to choose is secret, the Democrats have no means of proving that people loyal to the Republican Party are voting in the Democratic primary.
Also on December 21, the Republican Party of Montana, and several county Republican Parties in Montana, filed a similar cert petition. Because both Hawaii and Montana are in the Ninth Circuit, and because the Hawaii and Montana cases are virtually identical, after the Hawaii Democratic Party lost the case in the Ninth Circuit, it disposed of the Montana Republican case summarily. It is clear that the attorneys for both the Hawaii Democratic Party and the Montana Republican Party worked together on their cert petitions. The Montana cert petition quotes at great length from the Hawaii cert petition. Having the two major parties file simultaneously will tend to filter out the effect of any partisanship that lurks in the minds of the various U.S. Supreme Court justices. Here is the cert petition in the Montana case, which is Ravalli County Republican Central Committee v McCulloch. Thanks to Rick Hasen for both links.
