On May 16, U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock heard oral arguments in Libertarian Party of Maine v Dunlap, 2:16v-2. The hearing went well. The judge said that the weight of authority says that deadlines for new parties to get on the ballot cannot be as early as Maine’s deadline, which is December 1 of the year before the election. He also discussed what kind of relief might be appropriate. He said he would rule soon.
On May 16, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Stengel held a hearing in Constitution Party v Aichele, e.d. 12-cv-2726. The purpose of this hearing was to decide exactly what rules apply this year for the minor party plaintiffs who already prevailed against the state’s policy of putting them at risk of paying up to $110,000 if their petitions are challenged.
The attorney for the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties argued that because the law has been held invalid, the relief should be that the parties are put on the ballot automatically. The state argued that the parties still need to submit petitions. If the state prevails, though, the state elections department will have the work of checking the signatures, since the challenge procedure is void. The Elections Department has never before tried to validate signatures itself and may have trouble doing that. The state elections office is already under-staffed.
A decision is expected soon.
This Politico story discusses proposed rules changes that the Republican National Convention may pass. Among the proposals is an end to giving Iowa and New Hampshire permanent rights to hold the first two delegate selection events. The chair of the Texas Republican Party, Tom Mechler, has been supporting that idea ever since February 2016, when Donald Trump won the New Hampshire Republican primary.
This Orange County Register story says that it is considered likely that the November 2016 ballot in California’s 46th U.S. House district will have no option except to vote for a Democrat. The California top-two system is responsible for this limitation on voter choice. Although other U.S. House districts in California have also had only Democrats on the ballot in November, this will be the first time that such a U.S. House race in Orange County has had this characteristic. Orange County has substantially more registered Republicans than Democrats. In November 2014 the Republican who was on the November ballot, Neel Kashkari, outpolled Jerry Brown by 344,817 to 275,707 within Orange County. Thanks to Carla Marinucci for the link.
Lawrence Lessig has this essay in The Daily Beast, explaining why the Commission on Presidential Debates breaks federal campaign law when it holds general election presidential debates that are, in fact, only open to the Republican and Democratic nominees. Thanks to the Center for Competitive Politics for the link.
