On July 25, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed SB 49. The bill provided that when a special legislative election is called, and only one candidate files to be on the ballot, the election is then cancelled. The veto message points out that cancelling the election would interfere with the possibility that a write-in candidate might file. The California deadline for a write-in candidate to file is only two weeks before the election, so if the bill had gone into effect, the election would be cancelled before anyone had had a chance to file as a write-in.

The veto message is here. This bill had passed the State Senate over a year ago, on July 9, 2015. The Senate vote had been unanimous. It had passed the Assembly on June 27, 2016, and only four Assemblymembers had voted against the bill. Thanks to Mike Feinstein for this news.

Rocky De La Fuente submitted approximately 14,000 signatures to be on the Georgia ballot as an independent presidential candidate. The signatures were submitted by the July 12 deadline. But De La Fuente did not submit the names of his presidential elector candidates by July 1, and Georgia requires those names by that date.

Nevertheless, the state is checking his petition. Georgia and Arizona are the only states that require the names of presidential elector candidates to be submitted that early, and this year Arizona agreed not to enforce the presidential elector deadline, after the Green Party sued and Arizona decided not to enforce the presidential elector deadline.

On July 20, several Texas voters filed a federal lawsuit against the Texas system for electing State Supreme Court Justices, and Judges of the State Court of Criminal Appeals. Both courts have nine members. For both courts, elections are partisan and are at-large. The lawsuit charges that the system violates Section Two of the federal Voting Rights Act, because it makes it difficult for ethnic and racial minorities to elect judges of their choice. Here is the Complaint. The case is Lopez v Abbott, s.d., 2:16cv-303. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.