On April 4, the Utah Supreme Court heard arguments in the Republican Party’s lawsuit over how it should nominate candidates. The state law seems to say that candidates seeking the nomination of a qualified party who don’t have much support at a party caucus can still get on a primary ballot. The method for such candidates is a petition. The Republican Party doesn’t want anyone to be able to get on its primary ballot by petition. That issue is in federal court. But the federal court asked the State Supreme Court to interpret Utah law. Specifically, the federal court wants the State Supreme Court to say whether the petition procedure is mandatory for all parties, or whether parties that don’t like it can shut out petitioning candidates. See this story.

On April 4, the U.S. Supreme Court issued this unanimous opinion in Evenwel v Abbott, 14-940. The case had been filed by some Texas voters who argued that the U.S. Constitution requires that state legislative districts should be based on the number of eligible voters in each district, not the population. The Court rejected that idea, and said “one person, one vote” refers to the number of constituents in a district, not the numbr of eligible voters.

The decision does not settle the question of whether a state is free to use the number of eligible voters. The decision is by Justice Ruth Ginsburg.

South Dakota holds its presidential primaries on June 7. The only Democrats on the South Dakota ballot will be Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The only Republicans will be Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Donald Trump. No other state has so few major party candidates on the presidential primary ballots. The major parties chose candidates that would be on the ballots automatically. There is an alternate petition route for other candidates, but no one used it.