The Green Party and the Constitution Party recently filed this brief in the 11th circuit, in their lawsuit against the Georgia ballot access law for President. The law is so severe, it has not been used successfully since 2000.
Reply
On June 20, the Oregon House passed SB 146, which provides that if a party meets the vote test, it is on the ballot for the next two elections, instead of just the next election. The bill is now through the legislature.
On June 20, the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear the case that challenges the October 16 date for the special U.S. Senate election. See this story. This makes it certain that the election will be held in October. There is a bill pending in the legislature to move the November 5 election for state office to October 16, however, so it is still conceivable that New Jersey will just have one important general election date this year instead of two.
As noted here earlier, on June 17, a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., denied the Federal Election Commission’s request for reconsideration in Libertarian National Committee v FEC. The issue is whether the party is entitled to have its case heard before all the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit. The Courthouse News Service has this article about the ruling. It is somewhat unusual for Courthouse News Service to cover a denial of a request for rehearing. Generally the Courthouse News Service only writes about important court decisions, not on whether a request for rehearing is denied. But the News Service felt this development was interesting enough to cover, probably because the judge’s decision, denying rehearing to the FEC, is so interesting. The judge several times quoted from the transcript of the original hearing to show that points the FEC had conceded at oral argument, it now seems to want to retract.
As previously noted, on June 17, the Hawaii Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the party is entitled to restrict voting in its primary elections to party members. Hawaii has never had registration by party.
In order to prevail, the party must overturn a section of the Hawaii Constitution. Article II, section 4, says in part, “No person shall be required to declare a party preference or non-partisanship as a condition of voting in any primary or special primary election.” The party argues in its Complaint that the state Constitution and state election code prevents the party “from exerting any control over who may participate in the nomination of its candidates…A potential effect is that the active, earnest, and faithful members of the party may be substantially outnumbered in their own nomination process, by persons unknown to the party.”
The case is Democratic Party of Hawaii v Nago, 1:13cv-301. Here is the Complaint. It was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright, a George W. Bush appointee who, in past election law cases, has ruled for the state. In Nader v Cronin he upheld Hawaii law that requires six times as many signatures for an independent presidential candidate as are required for an entire newly-qualifying party. In Kostick v Nago, he was part of a 3-judge panel that upheld Hawaii redistricting, which excludes in the population counts certain voters (students or military) who seem not to be permanent residents. Judge Seabright is currently handling a case filed by the Justice Party against the February petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties to get on the ballot. Now that California’s deadline has been struck down, Hawaii has the earliest mandatory deadline in the nation for newly-qualifying parties to get on the ballot.