On October 2, the Ohio Supreme Court issued two opinions, both of them finding that when a candidate’s ballot access petition is rejected because the county board of elections determined there aren’t enough valid signatures, the candidate must be permitted to present affidavits from voters that they did sign the petition.

In State ex rel Crowl v Delaware County Board of Elections, 2015-Ohio-4097, candidate Douglas Crowl was running for Porter Township trustee, a nonpartisan election. He needed 25 signatures and submitted 28. The Board compared signatures on the petition with signatures on the voter registration forms, and determined that eight signatures didn’t look similar enough. The candidate then obtained affidavits from all eight voters whose signatures had been rejected, saying they did sign the petition. But the County Board said they could not consider such evidence. The State Supreme Court ruled 4-1 that the Board of Elections was wrong to have ignored the affidavits, and the Court ordered the candidate onto the ballot.

In State ex rel Burroughs v Summit County Board of Elections, 2015-Ohio-4122, candidate Richard Burroughs was an independent candidate for Akron city council. He needed 23 signatures and submitted 24. The county board felt that four of the signatures didn’t match. Burroughs filed a lawsuit and presented affidavits from all four voters whose signatures had been rejected, saying they had signed the petition. The Supreme Court put him on the ballot also. The vote was 4-1.

The dissenting judge said in both cases that state law has no provision for candidates to submit evidence, and called on the legislature to fix this flaw in the Ohio election law.

On October 8, two Socialist Party candidates for the California legislature filed a federal lawsuit against the California law that forces them to have “party preference: none” on the ballot, if they run for Congress or partisan state office. Soltysik v Padilla, c.d., 2:15cv-7916-AB. They want to have “party preference: Socialist” on the ballot.

Because California no longer has party nominees for Congress or partisan state office, there is no purpose for the party labels shown on California ballots except to give information to the voters about that candidate’s principles. California only permits candidates who are members of qualified parties to have a partisan label on the ballot.

By contrast, Washington state, which has a top-two system very much like California’s, lets all candidates choose any partisan label they wish, as long as it is not obscene and not longer than 15 characters.

The lawsuit is an ACLU case. The two candidate-plaintiffs are Emidio “Mimi” Soltysik and Jennifer McClellan. Both are registered Socialists. Here is a press release. The case is assigned to Judge Andre Birotte, Jr., an Obama appointee.

On June 29, the New Jersey legislature passed AB 4613. It provides that the government will automatically register all adult citizen residents known to exist. It also allows no-excuse early absentee voting, and lets 17-year-olds pre-register.

Governor Chris Christie still has not acted on the bill. The rules say he can delay deciding whether to sign or veto the bill until the legislature comes into session. The legislature may come into session this month. If it does not, it will come into session next month.