The Constitution Party has been petitioning for ballot status in the upcoming special election, State House district 31. In this district, 512 valid signatures are needed for independent candidates and for unqualified parties. Normally Alabama checks petitions on a flow basis, so that petitioning groups can tell how they are doing, and how many more they need. But now, the Secretary of State refuses to check any of the party’s petitions until after the deadline, so the party doesn’t have the benefit of knowing how many more signatures it needs.

The party has collected 675 signatures and is working to collect more. The deadline is 4 p.m. on Tuesday, December 3. That is also the date of the Republican primary. No Democrat filed, so this will be a one-candidate election if the party’s petition does not succeed, because no one else is petitioning. The 31st district is in Elmore and Coosa Counties.

Because there are four Republicans running in the primary tomorrow, probably no one will get a majority and there will be a run-off primary on January 28, 2014. In that case, the election itself will be in March 2014.

The Independent Voter Project of California, one of the groups that intervened in every court case challenging any detail of California’s top-two system, is somewhat well-known for hosting annual weekly meetings for some California legislators. The most recent such event was last month. John Hrabe has an article about the meeting at Calnewsroom, an on-line source for news about California politics and government.

The focus of John Hrabe’s article is that the Independent Voter Project refuses to identify the state legislators who attend its event, which is held at the Fairmont Kea Lani, one of Hawaii’s most luxurious resorts. Hrabe’s article also links to other news stories on the same subject. UPDATE: see this December 4 article, in which two Democratic State Senators voluntarily revealed that they had attended the session.

The U.S. Supreme Court has placed Libertarian Party of Michigan v Ruth Johnson, 13-421, on its list of cases to be considered at the December 13 conference. This is the case on whether Michigan’s Secretary of State should have kept Gary Johnson off the November 2012 ballot. Johnson appeared on the ballot in all states plus D.C. and Guam, except that he didn’t appear in Oklahoma because too many signatures were required, and he didn’t appear in Michigan because his name had been entered on the February 2012 Republican presidential primary.