On April 29, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in Williams-Yulee v Florida Bar Association, 13-1499. Here is the opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. The vote is 5-4. The opinion upholds a Florida rule that bars judicial candidates from asking for campaign contributions. The opinion says states have a compelling reason to uphold campaign speech involving judicial elections, to avoid the public perception that judges are not being bought by individuals who contribute to their campaigns.

The plaintiff had sent a mass e-mail to thousands of people, asking for contributions. She was not a judge, but she was running to become a judge.

On April 28, Washington, D.C., held special elections to fill two vacancies on the City Council. Here are the results. Party labels appeared on the ballot but parties did not have nominees.

In the 4th district race, there were 12 Democrats and Glova Scott, the Socialist Workers Party who had the ballot label “independent”.
Here is a picture of the ballot in that race. Oddly enough, the official candidate list shows her as “Socialist Workers”.

In the 8th district race, there were 12 Democrats and Keita Vanterpool, who was an independent. There is no procedure for runoffs; the winner is the person who received the most votes on April 28.

On April 26, Colleen M. O’Toole, an Ohio State Court of Appeals judge, filed a federal lawsuit to overturn some Ohio restrictions on candidates for Justice of the State Supreme Court. O’Toole plans to seek the Republican nomination for that office in the March 2016 primary. She challenges several rules: (1) she cannot legally raise money for her campaign until November 9, 2015; (2) her campaign literature and signs must include the words, “Appeals Court Judge 11th district” if she refers to herself as a judge at all; (3) her campaign signs, if they use the words “elect”, “vote”, or “for” must be in the same size font as the words “Ohio Supreme Court”; (4) her campaign literature can’t use the word “judge” as a verb; (5) various restrictions on how she can personally ask for campaign contributions.

The case is O’Toole v O’Connor, s.d., 2:15cv-1446. It was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge James L. Graham, a Reagan appointee. O’Toole is one of four Republicans running for three seats. Her complaint points out that her three opponents already have sizeable campaign treasuries, because they ran for office before and retained some of the contributions from past campaigns. One of her incumbent opponents already has $250,826 and he is free to spend it now, wheeas O’Connor so far only has $119 and she can’t raise more until November. Here is the Complaint.