This story, originally published in National Journal, describes petitioning in Virginia to get various Republican presidential candidates on the ballot. The requirement is 5,000. Many signatures were gathered at the polls on November 3, 2015, which was a statewide general election day for state legislature.
This story says Republicans in Utah who want to run for office are uncertain as to whether they should petition onto the June 2016 primary ballot, or instead seek to win a caucus endorsement. Many want a special session of the legislature to settle the matter; others look to state courts.
On November 6, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas, said it won’t have its opinion on Texas U.S. House and legislative redistricting out in time to affect the 2016 election. See this story. The case is Perez v Perry, w.d., 5:11cv360.
News sources are reporting that Jeb Bush didn’t file a complete slate of candidates for Delegate to the Republican National Convention in Alabama. However, Josh Putnam, an expert on major party presidential primaries, here explains why it makes no practical difference.
On November 10, the Ninth Circuit issued this opinion in Public Integrity Alliance v City of Tucson, 15-16142. By a vote of 2-1, the decision says that Tucson’s system of electing city council members violates Equal Protection.
Tucson has partisan city elections, and elects one city councilmember from each of six wards. In the partisan primary, candidates run within districts, so each district primary nominates someone to represent each party. But in the general election, the election is at-large.
Both the majority opinion and the dissent are flawed. The majority opinion, by Judge Alex Kozinski, a Reagan appointee, says, “Without the primary, there could be no candidate to compete in the general election; without the general election, the primary winners would sit on their hands. Because a candidate must win a primary in order to compete in the general election, the ‘right to choose a representative is in fact controlled by the primary’.”
This is a false statement, because Tucson has procedures for independent candidates to petition directly onto the general election ballot.
The opinion was co-signed by visiting U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Piersol, a Clinton appointee. The dissent is by Judge Richard Tallman, also a Clinton appointee, although a Republican. The dissent is also flawed, because it says “The Supreme Court has been reticent to apply strict scrutiny to state election laws. It has done so only to evaluate discriminatory poll taxes, property ownership requirements for voting, and durational residency requirements.” The Supreme Court has also applied strict scrutiny to ballot access, most recently in 1992 in Norman v Reed.
Also, the dissent says on page 18 that the U.S. Supreme Court case American Party of Texas v White held that states may establish waiting periods before voters may be permitted to change their registration and participate in another party’s primary. That is untrue; the case that did that is Rosario v Rockefeller.
