On July 7, a U.S. District Court heard arguments in Correll v Herring, e.d., Virginia, 3:16cv-467. This newspaper story describes the hearing, although it does not say anything about which way Judge Robert Payne appeared to be leaning. The article says there will be no decision today. The issue is the Virginia law that requires delegates to national conventions to vote for the presidential candidate on the first ballot who had won Virginia’s presidential primary. UPDATE: here is a more detailed news story from the Washington Post.

Based on case law, this case is likely to succeed. The U.S. Supreme Court, ever since 1972, has struck down state laws that tried to influence how national political party conventions are run.

Recently, there have been stories in major media that there is a conceivable path toward changing the rules of the Republican national convention, with an end toward nominating someone for President other than Donald Trump. Mark Whittington summarizes these reports at Blasting News.

On July 1, the North Carolina legislature passed SB 667, which makes several unrelated election law changes. One section of the bill changes the ballot order on general election ballots for candidates running for State Appeals Court seats. The existing law says that the ballot order for candidates for State Appeals Court seats is random.

The bill says that the candidates who are affiliated with the party that won the most recent gubernatorial election are always listed first. Republicans won the 2012 gubernatorial election. North Carolina has five elections this November for State Court of Appeals. In four of them, one Republican is running against one Democrat (candidates for the fifth seat are not yet determined, because it is a special election). Assuming SB 667 is signed into law, the Republicans will enjoy the top line.

Parties do not nominate candidates for State Court of Appeals, but a law passed last year says that the party affiliation of each candidate for that office should be printed on the ballot. See this story. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

Even though