On September 30, a Superior Court Judge ordered Palmdale, California, not to hold its scheduled election for city office. The election had been set for November 5. The order came in a lawsuit filed against the city’s at-large city council election system. See this story.
According to this story, the Governor of North Carolina, and also the legislature of North Carolina, are each hiring private attorneys to defend the state from the lawsuit filed yesterday against several new North Carolina election laws. The state’s Attorney General, Roy Cooper, says his office will defend the state laws. However, the Governor and the Republican majority in the legislature remember that Cooper, who is a Democrat, criticized the laws that are under attack while they were going through the legislature.
The lawsuit attacks the new law over government photo-ID for voters at the polls, a reduction in the number of days for early voting, a repeal of the law that lets unregistered individuals register at the early voting centers just before they vote, and restrictions on provisional ballots. The lawsuit is called U.S.A. v State of North Carolina.
Dan Winslow, a Republican state legislator in his second term, has resigned from the Massachusetts House, effective September 29. Besides being a state legislator, he was general counsel to Americans Elect from its founding until it dissolved.
He had introduced two bills in the Massachusetts legislature earlier this year to improve ballot access. But the legislature never held a hearing on either one. He also ran for U.S. Senate in the special election earlier this year, but he did not win the Republican primary.
See this story, which explains that Winslow resigned from the legislature because he has a new job with a salary that will substantially increase his income.
On October 1, the U.S. Supreme Court released a list of eight cases that the Court is accepting for full review. None of the eight is an election law case. One election law case had been on the September 30 conference. That one case is Corsi v Ohio Election Commission, 12-1442. The fact that the Corsi case was not accepted does not mean that it won’t be accepted later, but the odds for this case eventually being heard are now somewhat lower. This case challenged the Ohio Election Commission, which had required Corsi, a small-budget blogger who blogs about candidates and local politics, to register and disclose his finances.
On September 30, J. R. Myers, who was formerly a leader in the Alaskan Independence Party, announced that he will petition for a place on the 2014 ballot as the Constitution Party nominee for Governor. He will be the first Constitution Party nominee for any partisan office in Alaska (other than presidential electors).
