The Republican Connecticut legislators have introduced SB 333, which would abolish fusion. The sponsors are Senator Rob Sampson, and Representatives Gale Mastrofrancesco and Anne Dauphinais.
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On January 3, the city of Oxnard, California, asked the Ninth Circuit to rehear Moving Oxnard Forward v Ascension, 21-56295. The original panel had struck down the city’c limits on how much an individual may give to a candidate for City Council. Here is the brief.
The president of Moving Oxnard Forward is Aaron Starr. The city’s brief points out that Starr was elected to the City Council recently even though the campaign limits were in force at the time. Starr is a California Libertarian actvist.
There is a lawsuit pending in federal court against the New York election law which appears to bar anyone from using the ballot label “Independence”. The lawsuit was brought by a candidate for Mayor of New York city who wants to use that label on the ballot. Recently the case was re-assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Lashann Dearcy Hall, an Obama appointee. The lawsuit should move fairly quickly, because the plaintiff is requesting injunctive relief. The case is Walden v Kosinski, e.d., 1:25cv-72.
On January 17, four states sued the federal government to force the Census Bureau to ask about the immigration status of each person. The State of Louisiana v U.S. Department of Commerce, w.d. Louisiana, 6:25cv-76. The other states in the lawsuit are West Virginia, Ohio, and Kansas. Here is the Complaint.
The suit claims that if the population figures for each state reflected the number of illegal aliens, and those persons were not included in the formula for determining the number of U.S. House seats, that states like Louisiana and West Virginia would gain another member of the U.S. House, and of course certain other states, like California and Texas, would lose some seats.
The reason the Census Bureau doesn’t ask about immigration status is that if the question were asked, many people would refuse to cooperate with the Census.
The Fourteenth Amendment, Section Two, covers apportionment of U.S. House seats. It says, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
The case has not yet been assigned to any particular judge.
On January 20, outgoing President Joseph Biden commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier, who is age 80. See this story.
Peltier was the presidential nominee of the Peace & Freedom Party in 2004. The party nominated him to make a statement that he had been unjustly convicted. Pelter was also the original vice-presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in 2020. That party similarly wanted to highlight the injustice of his treatment. He resigned from the 2020 ticket, allegedly for health reasons, but actually because his attorneys believed his candidacy would damage his chances of leniency from President Trump.