On July 29, Kansas state trial court judge Larry Hendricks orally ordered the Kansas Secretary of State to stop keeping two separate lists of registered voters, one list of people who used the federal form, and another list who used the state form. The Secretary of State’s policy has been that people who used the federal form can’t vote in state or local elections. The basis for the order is that there is no Kansas law permitting two separate lists. The case is Brown v Kobach.
On July 29, the Sixth Circuit affirmed a U.S. District Court opinion in Libertarian Party v Husted, 16-3537. This means that the Ohio Libertarian Party won’t be on the ballot as a party this year, unless possibly it wins its pending case in the State Appeals Court.
The decision says that the individuals who conspired to keep the party’s gubernatorial nominee off the party’s primary ballot were not state actors. It upholds the law that says newly-qualifying parties are not entitled to their own primary election.
As to the party’s argument that the State Constitution requires that all parties must nominate by primary, the Sixth Circuit said that is a decision for Ohio state court. That issue is still pending in a case that is also called Libertarian Party of Ohio.
Gary Johnson is circulating the petition to be on the ballot as an independent presidential candidate. The deadline for that petition is August 10. That requirement is 5,000 signatures.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders recently explained that he is still an independent, not a Democrat. See this story. The author of the article seems to think that if Sanders lived in a state with partisan registration, then he would have been forced to register as a Democrat in order to seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. That is not true. Political parties have a freedom of association right to nominate non-members if they wish. The Whig Party in 1840 nominated a Democrat for Vice-President. The Republican Party in 1864 nominated a Democrat for Vice-President. The Democratic Party in 1872 nominated a Republican, Horace Greeley, for President.
THe U.S. Supreme Court said in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut that political parties are free to nominate non-members if they wish. When Dwight Eisenhower was nominated for President by the Republican Party in July 1952, he was not a registered voter. Thanks to Gene Berkman for the link.
On July 29, the lawsuit Dorsey v Lamone, a Maryland ballot access case, was settled. The State Board of Elections agreed to lower the statewide independent petition requirement in 2016 and for any possible special election in 2017 from 1% of the number of registered voters (40,603) to exactly 10,000 signatures. The Board took this action because on June 10, 2016, U.S. District Court Judge George L. Russell had denied the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The lawsuit had been filed in 2015 and argued that it is unconstitutional to require statewide independent candidates to obtain four times as many signatures as new parties. New parties get on the ballot with 10,000 signatures.
The State Board of Elections and the Attorney General also agreed to ask the 2017 legislative session to put the agreement into the law.
This is the third time this year that, due to a federal court, the number of signatures for either an independent candidate or a new party has been lowered. The other instances this year are the March 2016 Georgia decision reducing the requirement from approximately 50,000 signatures to exactly 7,500 signatures for president, and the Pennsylvania June 2016 decision cutting the statewide petitions from 21,775 signatures to exactly 5,000.
On July 29, the Fourth Circuit issued an opinion in North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v McCrory, 16-1468. Judges James A. Wynn and Henry Floyd, Obama appointees, enjoined voting restrictions passed in 2013 that reduced early voting, limited same-day registration, curtailed ability for provisional ballots to be cast in precincts away from the voter’s home precinct, eliminated the ability of 17-year-olds to pre-register, and created a requirement for government photo-ID for voters at the polls. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, a Clinton appointee, would only have enjoined the photo-ID law.
The panel determined that the North Carolina legislature acted with intent to injure African American voters. The U.S. District Court had upheld all the challenged laws. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
