On June 26, 2014, Douglas Campbell, state chair of the Colorado Constitution Party, died. This is somewhat old news but it has just now come to the attention of B.A.N. Campbell won one of the most significant lawsuits in the nation’s history over Article One and the constitutional qualifications to run for Congress in 1999, Campbell v Davidson.

Campbell said he was conscientiously opposed to registering to vote. Nevertheless, he wanted to run for Congress in 1998 as the nominee of the Constitution Party (which was then called the U.S. Taxpapers Party). He petitioned successfully but was still kept off the ballot because the law required all ballot-listed candidates to be registered to vote. He persuaded a U.S. District Court, and then then Tenth Circuit, that a state law requiring candidates for Congress to be registered voters violates the principle set forth in U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, which is the U.S. Supreme Court 1995 decision that said states can’t add to the constitutional qualifications for Congress and therefore state term limits laws for Congress are void.

Colorado appealed its loss in the Campbell case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The cites for Campbell v Davidson are 46 F.Supp.2d 1115 (1999), 233 F.3d 1229 (2000), and 532 U.S. 973 (2000). Since the Campbell decisions, similar lawsuits were won in the Ninth Circuit by Michael Schaefer, and somewhat parallel decisions in the Fifth and Second Circuits.

There are other state ballot access restrictions that violate U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, particularly laws in a few states that require candidates for Congress to have been registered in a certain way. But the only ballot access laws that have ever been struck down on Article One grounds are term limits laws and laws requiring voter registration and/or residency. Campbell showed a great deal of courage in bringing his lawsuit. He had to face the ridicule that comes when voters hear that a candidate wants to be elected, yet refuses himself to register to vote. When he sued, he had no precedents directly on his side. His victory is probably the most significant constitutional election law decision ever won by a member of the Constitution Party. Campbell lived in Arvada, Colorado, and was age 68.

Two initiatives are circulating in Maine on election law topics. Maine Citizens for Clean Elections is virtually finished circulating an initiative that would (1) fully fund the public funding program; (2) require disclosure of top donors who make independent expenditures; (3) require disclosure of fundraising for transition and inaugural committees. This initiative has been circulating since May 2014. If it is submitted in January 2015, the vote on it will be on November 3, 2015.

The other initiative would establish ranked-choice voting for all federal and state offices except President. It has only been circulating for a month but seems likely to be finished in January 2015. However, if the sponsors choose not to submit the signatures that early, the initiative would be on the ballot in November 2016 instead of November 2015.