On July 3, the Hawaii Democratic Party filed this reply brief in Democratic Party of Hawaii v Nago, in the Ninth Circuit. The issue originally was whether the party has a right to close its primary to just members. On appeal, the issue is whether the Hawaii law, telling all qualified parties that they must have open primaries, is unconstitutional on its face, or just as applied to parties that don’t want an open primary. The reply brief deals with that issue.

Unlike most legal briefs, it has relatively little reference to precedents, and instead depends on logic, and examples, to make its points. The brief has a very interesting analogy to a hypothetical law establishing one particular religion as a state religion. Even if you don’t normally read briefs, consider reading this one.

South Carolina held partisan primaries on June 10. At these primaries, the state tested a new type of government photo-ID law, in which anyone without an ID is still permitted to vote if the individual explains why he or she was unable to produce an ID. According to this story, no voter anywhere in the state was turned away from voting.

Los Angeles County, California, keeps a running total of the number of registered voters in each party, and the number of independents. Here is a link to that page.

Since registration closed for the June 3 primary on May 19, the number of registered voters has declined. Every qualified party has declined, except that the Libertarian Party has increased. The number of voters not registered in any qualified party has declined. Democrats have dropped 4,731; Republicans have dropped 3,980; American Independent has dropped 234; Americans Elect has dropped 28; Green has dropped 67; Peace & Freedom has dropped 20; the total of independent voters and voters registered in other parties has dropped 670.

Libertarian registration has gained 61.