The Brennan Center for Justice, formed by former law clerks to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, has issued a policy statement that argues that political parties are valuable and to some extent have been over-regulated, especially in campaign finance law. Here is the link to a description of the paper. This is an important development. In the past the Brennan Center has been aligned with groups which fiercely favor restricting limits on donations to political parties, and also fiercely favor restricting political parties from spending money on their own candidates.

Congress has attached an amendment to the cromnibus spending bill that would ease restrictions on party assistance to their own candidates.

This article says Texas state government has already spent $8,000,000 in legal costs, defending its 2013 photo ID law for voters at the polls, and the U.S. House and legislative districting plans enacted after the 2010 census. And neither issue is resolved yet, so costs will continue to climb.

The Chicago Sun-Times has this article about the hard work involved for a major party presidential candidate to get on his or her party’s primary ballot. Although the number of signatures is only 3,000, candidates must recruit candidates for Delegate whose names go on the primary ballots. The article believes that Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson are not working on this yet. Petitioning in Ilinois for primary ballot access starts in October.