On April 23, a Pennsylvania state appeals court refused to put Stephanie Singer on the Democratic primary ballot. She is an incumbent City Commissioner who wants to run for re-election. She needed 1,000 valid signatures. She submitted 1,485 but the trial court found that only 996 signatures were valid. Afterwards, she obtained affidavits from 16 voters whose names had been invalidated but who swore they did indeed sign her petition. The appeals court said that evidence was too late. See this story. Pennsylvania allows write-in votes in primaries but the story suggests that she has given up.

Both bills to repeal the Indiana straight-ticket device failed to make enough headway by certain legislative deadlines, so the bills won’t pass. They were SB 201 and HB 1008. The latter bill had passed the House but did not progress through the State Senate.

On April 24, the Ninth Circuit upheld Arizona’s voter registration forms, which give a checkbox to the two largest parties and does not mention the other qualified parties. People who want to register into any other qualified party must write them in on a line that is less than an inch long. Arizona Libertarian Party v Bennett, 13-16254.

The opinion is by Judge A. Wallace Tashima and co-signed by Judges M. Margaret McKeown and Marsha S. Berzon. The 19-page opinion says that the Libertarian and Green Parties are not really harmed by not being listed on the forms, and that the existing form serves the government interest in not having to re-print the form every time a small party loses or gains qualification. UPDATE: here is a newspaper story about the decision. And here is another.