According to this story, Arizona House Speaker J. D. Mesnard will work to pass a bill for Arizona to join the national popular vote plan. He is a Republican.
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On December 14, attorneys for California state government filed this brief in Koller v Brown, n.d., 5:16cv-7069. This is the lawsuit in which a California Democratic presidential elector seeks to invalidate the California law that requires presidential elector candidates to vote in the electoral college for the national ticket of that elector’s party.
The state brief almost reads like a court decision instead of the brief of one side. It presents the arguments on both sides. However, it says the elector is not entitled to injunctive relief, because even though California law tells electors how to vote, California law does not have any penalty for an elector who disobeys. Therefore, the state says, Koller is not being subject to any possible harm, no matter what he does. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
This Toledo Blade editorial says the Ohio Secretary of State should rule that the Libertarian Party is a qualified party.
Jill Stein is in the process of polling her 161,000 recount donors, for their input on what to do with the unspent funds. See her web page here.
On December 14, the Eighth Circuit heard Moore v Martin, 15-3558. This is the case over the constitutionality of the non-presidential independent candidate petition deadline in Arkansas, which is in early March. The three judges are Roger Wollman, Lavenski Smith, and Duane Benton. The lower court had upheld the deadline. From the tenor of the argument and the comments and questions of each of the judges, it seems likely that the panel will reverse the lower court and invalidate the deadline.
Arkansas had its April deadline declared unconstitutional in 1974, and again in 1976. An even earlier deadline passed in 1987, January, was held unconstitutional in 1988. The Arkansas legislature has consistently lost on this issue, but invariably the legislature fixes the law, and then forgets why it did that, and reverts to an early deadline. The oral argument partly focused on the historical record.