Law Professor Derek Muller has this article about qualifications to be president and how challenges to ballot access based on failure to meet qualifications could ever arise. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
UPDATE: here is a very thorough and clear essay in The Atlantic by Law Professor Bryan A. Garner. Thanks to HowAppealing for that link.
The reference book America Votes 2013-2014 is now published. It is also known as America Votes 31. Ever since 1956, every two years, another version is published. America Votes is the single best book of election returns to be published. Although the federal government also publishes election return books, they don’t include election returns for any state office. Also they don’t have nearly as much detail as America Votes does. America Votes has maps and all the statewide election returns are by county, not just state totals. The author of America Votes 31, as usual, is Rhodes Cook.
The Federal Elections Commission’s book of election returns for 2014 still isn’t published. When it is published, it will be titled Federal Elections 2014.
On January 14, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene in the Ohio Libertarian Party’s ballot access case. The part of the case put in front of the U.S. Supreme Court concerned whether the 2013 ballot access law violates the Ohio Constitution. The U.S. District Court is still considering the part of the case on whether the 2014 removal of the party’s gubernatorial nominee from the Libertarian primary ballot was unlawful.
The United Independent Party has been ballot-qualified in Massachusetts since November 2014. However, it will go off the ballot in November 2016, unless it either runs a presidential candidate who gets 3%, or unless the party has registration equal to 1% of the state total.
The registration alternative has been part of the Massachusetts law since 1990. So far no party has used it. It requires approximately 40,000 registered members. But the United Independent Party now has 20,941 registered members and hopes to be at 40,000 by November 2016. The party does not expect to have a presidential nominee, although that could always change.
In the meantime the party has kindly e-mailed its registered members and suggested that they may wish to temporarily leave the party, so as to be able to vote in one of the presidential primaries in March. The e-mail explains how to leave the party and how to re-enroll in it.
On January 14, U.S. District Court Judge M. Hannah Lauck issued a four-page order, saying she won’t at this time stop Virginia election officials from using a sign-in sheet at the polls that says voters choosing a Republican ballot are Republicans. However, there will be a provisional Republican ballot for voters who refuse to sign that sign-in sheet. If the court later decides that the sign-in statement is illegal, those provisional ballots would be counted.
The case is Parson v Alcorn, e.d., 3:16cv-13. The court order depends mostly on past judicial decisions that say parties have freedom of association to determine who votes in their primaries.
There is no such statement for voters choosing a Democratic presidential primary ballot.
