On May 22, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Virginia U.S. House districts that were drawn earlier this year by a 3-judge U.S. District Court. Wittman v Personhuballah, 14-1504. The U.S. District Court had redrawn the districts because it found the legislature’s plan, enacted after the 2010 census, to be a racial gerrymander.

The U.S. Supreme Court opinion is only eight pages and is by Justice Stephen Breyer. It does not decide the issue of whether the legislature’s plan was a racial gerrymander. Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court only decided that no one challenging the 3-judge U.S. District Court decision any longer has standing.

The Virginia State Board of Elections was controlled by Republican appointees when the original case was filed, in 2013. In Virginia, the State Board of Elections has three members, and two members must be members of the Governor’s party. Democrats won the governorship in November 2013, so under the new Governor, Terry McAuliffe, an all-new Board of Elections switched to a Democratic majority. The new board did not wish to appeal the decision of the U.S. District Court to the U.S. Supreme Court, so some Republican members of Congress from Virginia intervened in the case, and said they have standing because the new districts injure them, because the new district boundaries removed a portion of their “base”, and replaced them with “unfavorable Democratic votes.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that these members of Congress don’t have standing because they failed to submit any evidence that these allegations are true.

Thus, the case turned on the technicality that attorneys for the Republican members of Congress failed to prove that a Republican member of Congress is harmed by a redistricting plan that tilts the partisan balance of his or her district toward the other major party. Certainly, if the attorneys for the Republican members of Congress had realized that the U.S. Supreme Court would take advantage of this technicality, they easily could have proved this, but they probably assumed it was obvious and that no proof was needed.

On May 20, some California activists who are informally working for Bernie Sanders filed a lawsuit against some California county election officials, and the Secretary of State. They are concerned that many votes, both independents and party members, have not been adequately informed about the rules for the June presidential primary. One of the plaintiffs is the American Independent Party. Having a qualified political party in the lawsuit may help to overcome standing problems. The case is Voting Rights Defense Project v DePuis, 3:16cv-2739, northern district.

The lawsuit complains that many independent voters have already sent in the mail ballots they received automatically, and these ballots do not include the presidential primary. If such independent voters then learn that they could have requested a Democratic, American Independent, or Libertarian presidential primary ballot, it is too late for them, because no one is permitted to vote twice.

The lawsuit also complains that some of the counties have given information only to independent voters, when they should have given the information to all voters. And the lawsuit complains about the fact that instructions and procedures differ from county to county. Here is a Sacramento Bee story about the lawsuit. Here is the original Complaint, which has since been amended because the original cover sheet referred to the “American Independence Party” instead of the American Independent Party. UPDATE: here is a somewhat more detailed story, from a newspaper in San Diego County.