This story by National Public Radio in Peoria seems to be the first general news media mention of the February 12 victory in the Illinois Libertarian Party’s ballot access case.
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One of the thirteen candidates whose name is on the Texas Republican presidential primary ballot is Elizabeth Gray. She paid $5,000 to be on that ballot, yet she has not entered any other state’s presidential primary, has no web page, has not filed with the Federal Election Commission, and can’t even be found at the address she listed. See this story, written by Rick Adams, a Texas blogger. The Texas primary is March 1. Thanks to Jim Riley for the link.
The Independent Green Party, which exists only in Virginia and which is not associated with the Green Party, has already begun circulating a petition in Virginia for President. It lists Michael Bloomberg for President and Larry Ellison for Vice-President. In case those individuals choose not to run, Virginia law lets the Independent Green Party, or any petitioning group, substitute different names later. Thanks to Carey Campbell for this news.
Many commentators believe that Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, which says the U.S. House chooses the President when no one gets a majority of the electoral college vote, injures independent presidential candidates, or the presidential nominees of new parties. But Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., a member of the Wall Street editorial board and a columnist for that newspaper, writes here that the provision would actually help Michael Bloomberg if he ran for president this year as an independent.
This article at The Moderate Voice discusses Jenkins’ column and quotes extensively from it.
Scotusblog has this explanation about what happens to U.S. Supreme Court decisions that haven’t been issued yet, but in which the initial vote after the oral argument resulted in a tentative 5-4 decision, in which Justice Antonin Scalia was in the majority. As the article explains, such tentative votes don’t count, and there may be many 4-4 decisions. On a U.S. Supreme Court tie, the ruling of the lower court stands.
This article explains the consequences for several high-profile cases.
For election law, the first impact of Scalia’s death may be in Harris v McCrory, 15A809, the North Carolina gerrymandering case. The Court was expected to decide very soon whether or not to stay the lower court ruling. With no stay, the North Carolina U.S. House districts will be redrawn soon. And with new districts in place, the state will almost certainly then provide for a primary at some time other than the scheduled March 15 primary. That special, later primary would be just for U.S. House.