On December 19, proponents of a particular California initiative sued Mono County and Tulare County election officials, for refusing to accept signatures on their initiative. As a result, the petitions were rejected, and the entire initiative may hinge on the disputed signatures. See this story. The case is Gleason v Bowen, 34-2013-80001714, filed in Superior Court in Sacramento.
Former U.S. Senator Larry Pressler, who represented South Dakota in the Senate as a Republican 1978-1996, will soon announce that he will run in 2014 for the Senate as an independent. See this story.
On December 20, a Montana lower state court struck down an initiative passed in 2012 that orders Montana legislators to work for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. The recent Montana case is Rickert v McCulloch, Lewis and Clark County, cdv-2012-1003.
The initiative said, in part, “Montana’s congressional delegation is charged with proposing a joint resolution offering an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that accomplishes the following: (a) overturns the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v FEC; (b) establishes that corporations are not human beings with constitutional rights; (c) establishes that campaign contributions or expenditures by corporations, whether to candidates or ballot issues, may be prohibited by a political body at any level of government; and (d) accomplishes the goals of Montanans in achieving a level playing field in election spending.”
The recent decision depends on a 1984 Montana Supreme Court opinion, State ex rel Harper v Waltermire, which struck down an initiative that ordered Montana legislators to work for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The recent decision upholds the part of the initiative that says that the voters find that “unlimited corporate donations creates a dominating impact on the Montana political process and inevitably minimizes the impact of individual Montana citizens.” However, it should be noted that Citizens United v FEC did not hold that corporations may make contributions to candidates; it said they can make independent expenditures.
On December 20, the Arizona Libertarian Party and the Arizona Green Party filed their final brief in the Ninth Circuit, in the case that challenges Arizona voter registration forms. The state voter registration forms list the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and give each a checkbox, but if an applicant wants to register into any other party, qualified or not, the applicant must write-in that choice. Voters who wish to be independents apparently are supposed to leave this area of the form blank, although there are probably applicants who write-in “independent”.
Arizona has four ballot-qualified parties, all of which nominate by primary, yet the form suggests that only the Democratic and Republican Parties are qualified. This reply brief takes the state to task, for having said in its brief that Arizona has had 23 qualified parties at one time or another since 1975. Most of the entries on the state’s list were not ballot-qualified parties; the Arizona Assistant Attorney General who wrote the brief confused ballot-qualified parties with groups that merely filed to have write-ins for their presidential nominees counted.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to hear Republican Party of Nevada v Miller, 13-442, at its January 10, 2014 conference. This is the case over whether the plaintiffs have standing to challenge the inclusion of “None of these candidates” on Nevada primary and general election ballots, for statewide office. The Ninth Circuit had said none of the plaintiffs have standing. The plaintiffs include some Republican candidates for presidential elector in the 2012 election.
Five minor parties have filed an amicus curiae brief in this case, urging the court to take the case to recognize more standing for political parties. They are the Libertarian, Green, Constitution, Independent American, and America’s Parties.
The original case was filed to challenge “None of these candidates” on the basis that voters who choose this option are being discriminated against, because if “None of these candidates” wins, there is no consequence. Whichever candidate gets the most votes wins, regardless of the vote total for “None of these candidates.”
