On July 7, Better for America issued a press release saying it has enough valid signatures in New Mexico. However, the press release turned out to be inaccurate. This post has been re-written. The original post said the Secretary of State had verified the petition, but that was not true.
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.
Pennsylvania State Senator Mike Folmer has been introducing ballot access reform in each of the last four sessions of the legislature. His commentary on the recent change in Pennsylvania ballot access is carried here, in a guest column in the Lebanon Daily News. It is somewhat disappointing that he did not mention that the new rules for 2016 include a county distribution requirement, something that has been held unconstitutional in sixteen reported decisions, including two by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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.
A draft of the 2016 platform for the Democratic Party says that the party will oppose partisan gerrymandering. See page 17. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
