U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chambers will hear Daly v Tennant on September 22, Thursday, at 1 p.m., in the federal courthouse in Huntington, West Virginia. The issue is whether it violates the U.S. Constitution for West Virginia to certify 17 petitioning (independent and unqualified party) candidates for the November ballot, and then remove them on September 16 because they didn’t comply with a requirement that didn’t appear to exist until September 15. UPDATE: here is a newspaper story about the hearing.

On September 20, the plaintiffs in the West Virginia ballot access case filed this brief, in support of their motion for an emergency order to put the candidates on the ballot.

On the evening of Monday, September 19, Mike Fellows was killed in a car crash. He had been returning from a candidate’s forum. He is the Montana Libertarian Party’s nominee for U.S. House. He was also the most active leader of that party. Whenever there was a legislative hearing on a bill affecting ballot access, he was there. He was also the chief candidate-recruiter for the party, and a very good source for election law news from Montana for me.

The Montana election law does allow the Libertarian Party to replace him on the ballot, but it must do that within five days. The overseas absentee ballots have not been mailed yet and can be reprinted. Thanks to Michael Fucci for this sad news. UPDATE: see this story. Also, this story.