This is old news, but it has just come to my attention. In 2000 Ralph Nader won a federal lawsuit against South Dakota’s June petition deadline for independent presidential candidates. Nader v Hazeltine, 110 F Supp 2d 1201. The court said June is too early for presidential independents. The state did not appeal, and in 2001 passed Senate Bill 7, moving the deadline for presidential independents from June to the first Tuesday in August.

However, in 2012, the legislature passed HB 1182. The intent of that bill was to move the non-presidential independent deadline from June to April. However, HB 1182 apparently accidentally repealed the sentence at the end of section 12-7-1 that had set an August deadline for presidential independents. There is no longer any separate law governing independent presidential petition deadlines. Technically, the law now says the independent presidential deadline is in April. But since even June was too early, it is obvious that April is also unconstitutional. It is not known what position the Secretary of State will take. Already South Dakota is being sued for having a too-early petition deadline for new parties.

On August 7, several amici curiae briefs were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Evenwel v Abbott, 14-940. The issue is whether the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. House and state legislative districts to based on equal numbers of eligible voters, or population. One of the amici is from sixteen Tennessee state legislators. They argue that the Court should choose eligible voters. Here is the amicus.

Kentucky election laws provide presidential primaries in May to any party that received 20% of the vote in the last presidential election. But earlier this year, the Executive Committee of the Kentucky Republican Party voted tentatively not to use the presidential primary, and instead set up a caucus in March.

However, the full party state central committee makes the final decision about that on August 22. According to this story, the party is leaning away from a caucus. The idea for a caucus had originated with supporters of U.S. Senator Rand Paul. Paul must run for re-election to the U.S. Senate next year, and his name can’t appear on the presidential primary ballot if he is simultaneously running for the Senate nomination. Thanks to Doug McNeil for the link.