On February 19, the 7th circuit heard oral argument in Stone v Board of Election Commissioners for Chicago, 13-2733. The three judges are William J. Bauer (a Ford appointee), Joel Flaum (a Reagan appointees), and David Hamilton (an Obama appointee). The issue is whether the plaintiffs may have a trial to demonstrate that the 12,500 signature requirement for candidates for citywide office in Chicago is too onerous.

The hearing can be heard using this link. It lasts almost 32 minutes. The case against the 12,500 requirement is tough to win, because in 2011, six candidates for Mayor appeared on the ballot. However, for City Treasurer, only one candidate managed to comply, leaving voters with no real choice. Also, in 2007, there was only one candidate on the ballot for City Treasurer. All Chicago city elections are non-partisan.

This Ohio newspaper story reports that Martin “Buck” Elsass failed to get on the Ohio Libertarian primary ballot for State House, even though only 25 signatures are required. The Elsass petition carried the names of at least 25 registered voters, but a technical error invalidated some of those signatures.

The story does not mention this point, but Elsass might still qualify for the November ballot if he can get 25 write-ins in the Libertarian primary on May 6.

According to the bottom part of this article, former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann is considering running for Governor of Hawaii this year as an independent candidate. A poll suggests that 39% of the voters would consider voting for him if he did that. Hannemann was elected Mayor of Honolulu in a non-partisan election in 2004 and re-elected in 2008. He is of German and Samoan extraction and is six feet seven inches in height.

If he does run, he only needs 25 valid signatures, but must run in the open primary and must outpoll at least one gubernatorial candidate who won the nomination of a qualified party, or at least 10% of the total primary vote, whichever is less. If a Libertarian or a Green runs for Governor, Hannemann is virtually certain to pass the primary vote test, because relatively few voters choose a Libertarian primary ballot or a Green primary ballot. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.