on February 19, a Cook County Circuit Court will hear a challenge to the ballot position of Ted Cruz, for the Illinois Republican presidential primary ballot. See this story.
1
On February 18, a North Carolina lower state court notified attorneys for both sides that the court will strike down North Carolina’s law providing for retention elections for State Supreme Court Justices. See this story. There will probably be an appeal to the State Supreme Court. The basis for the lawsuit is that the State Constitution says that Justices are elected by the voters.
The Rhode Island Secretary of State’s office has finished checking petitions for presidential primary candidates. Twelve Republicans and four Democrats submitted at least 1,000 valid signatures, and will be on ballots.
The four Democrats are Hillary Clinton, Rocky De La Fuente, Bernie Sanders, and Mark Stewart.
The twelve Republicans are Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, and Donald Trump. Never before had more than seven Republicans appeared on a Rhode Island presidential primary ballot. Although some of these candidates have withdrawn from the race, they were still running on the date they submitted petitions, so they will be on the ballot.
On February 18, some Kansas voters filed a new federal lawsuit to regain their status as registered voters. The case is being handled by the ACLU and seeks to be a class action lawsuit. It is Fish v Kobach, 2:16cv-2105. It is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge John W. Lundstrum, a Bush Sr. appointee.
Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the federal law that provides a federal voter registration form, and even though that form does not ask applicants to attach proof of citizenship, Kansas will not register voters who use the federal form unless they supply proof of citizenship within 90 days of filing the federal form. The lawsuit challenges Kansas’ policy, and it also challenges the Kansas law that says applicants who use the state form must attach proof of citizenship. The lawsuit says there are 35,000 persons in Kansas who have registered to vote but who are still not on the voter rolls. Others have been purged.
On February 17, the Maine Secretary of State filed this response in the Libertarian Party’s ballot access case. The case challenges the December 1, 2015 deadline for a group to qualify as a party. The state says that the early deadline is needed for proper election administration, even though the primary is not until June 2016.
The state says that early deadlines are constitutional if the petition or registration drive hurdle is easy, and then says that getting 5,000 voters to join the party on voter registration forms is easy. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Anderson v Celebrezze the early deadlines are unconstitutional, regardless of how easy or difficult the procedure is. In Anderson v Celebrezze, John Anderson only needed 5,000 signatures, which was only about one-tenth of 1% of the last presidential vote cast. But the March 20 deadline was still unconstitutional.