On January 20, a subcommittee of the Virginia House Privileges and Elections Committee passed HB 645. This is the bill to provide for party labels on the general election ballot, for partisan county offices. The vote was 4-3.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, hears Common Cause v Biden, 12-5412, on January 21. The lawsuit, filed by Common Cause, five U.S. House members, and others, argues that U.S. Senate Rule XXII (the “cloture rule”, also called the “filibuster rule”) is unconstitutional. Alternatively, the lawsuit argues that it is unconstitutional for each new session of the Senate to assume that rules from the previous session automatically remain in place. Here is the Common Cause brief.
The U.S. District Court had ruled on December 21, 2012, that the plaintiffs lack standing.
Tennessee’s State Constitution says that state court judges should be chosen by popular vote, but the state has not been holding such elections in recent years, and depends on appointing judges. This article describes John Jay Hooker’s attempts to win a ruling in state court that the state constitution should be followed. The article also explains that defenders of judicial appointment are hoping to win a popular vote in November 2014 to change the state constitutional provisions on judicial selection.
Independent of that, and not mentioned in the article above, a federal court will hear a case on January 30, filed by Herbert Moncier, who wants to run for a judicial position. That case is Moncier v Haslam, eastern district, 3:13cv-630. Here is an article about the federal case.
This article in the Kennebec Journal (from Maine) explains that veterans of the Americans Elect movement are active in assisting Eliot Cutler, an independent candidate this year for Governor of Maine. Cutler placed second as an independent for Governor in 2010, and is trying again.
Also, Ileana Wachtel, mentioned in the article, is a campaign consultant to Marianne Williamson, who is running as an independent for Congress in Los Angeles County. Wachtel had been spokesperson for Americans Elect during 2011.
On January 9, briefs were filed simultaneously by both sides in MEA-MFT v State of Montana, 13-789. This is the case now in the Montana Supreme Court on whether the November 2014 ballot should contain a ballot measure imposing a top-two open primary. Here is the 41-page brief of the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs, who oppose the ballot measure and hope to remove it from the ballot, argue that the measure violates a law that says the “Title” of a ballot measure (i.e., the language that appears on the ballot) can’t be longer than 100 words. The plaintiffs also argue that the measure violates the single-subject rule. Finally, they argue that the measure, as described by the Attorney General for the voters pamphlet, is misleading.
The state had to file its brief before it had read the other side’s brief, so that the state’s brief does not comprehensively respond to all of the other side’s arguments. For example, the reason the measure is more than 100 words is that the state believes that the Title must mention all the code sections altered by the measure. Counting each election law code section as a separate word puts the word count at 196 words. The states argues it isn’t reasonable to count numbers in the word count. But the plaintiffs, in addition to arguing that numbers do count as words, also argues that the state didn’t need to put all the code sections into the title. Because the state hadn’t seen that argument yet, of course it didn’t respond to that argument. The state’s brief mentions that the Supreme Court might want to let the state file a supplemental brief. Thanks to Mike Fellows for the link.