On November 15, Mark Everson dropped out of the Republican presidential race. See this story. He was IRS Commissioner under President Ronald Reagan, and held other high-level jobs in the federal government. But the Republican Party never accepted him as a bona fide candidate, even though he did have campaign offices open in Iowa and New Hampshire. He was not included in any polls or any Republican debates. He was not invited into the Florida Republican Party’s fund-raiser, which meant that he couldn’t be on the Florida Republican primary ballot automatically; instead he would have needed a difficult petition, or a filing fee of $25,000.

On November 5, the Arizona Libertarian and Green Parties asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case against the discriminatory Arizona voter registration form. Even though Arizona has four qualified parties, the form only lists the two largest parties and gives them a checkbox. If a voter wants to register into the ballot-qualified plaintiff parties, the voter must write them in on the line marked “other”. Here is the cert petition. The case number is 15-598.

The reason the U.S. Supreme Court might plausibly take this case is that the Court needs to clarify the standards for such cases. Supposedly laws that discriminate against minor parties and independent candidates are subject to heightened scrutiny; only nondiscriminatory laws get rational basis review. But in this case, the Ninth Circuit did not apply heightened scrutiny even though the law is discriminatory.