An independent new group, created by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, has begun working on how to improve the general election presidential debates. The group plans to meet with persons who advocate easing the standards for candidates to be invited. See this Politico news story. Of course, the group will also be meeting with the Commission on Presidential Debates. Thanks to Brian Bittner for the link.
On November 26, the Arizona Supreme Court ordered that until that court hears the case over Arizona campaign contribution limits on December 17, the lower limits should remain in place. Arizona Clean Elections Commission v Brain.
The issue arose when the 2013 session of the legislature passed HB 2593, which sharply increases contribution limits. The public funding law, passed by the voters in 1998, does not permit the legislature to make changes unless each house passes the change by a 75% vote. HB 2593 did not get that much support, but the legislature argues that increasing contribution limits is not really part of the public funding law. However, the State Court of Appeals ruled against the legislature.
On November 26, the U.S. Supreme Court held a conference to decide which cases to accept. A few hours later, the Court announced that it is taking four particular cases, none of them election law cases. This probably (but not certainly) means that the Court won’t hear Judd v Libertarian Party of Virginia, 13-231. That case was on the Court’s conference list for November 26.
The Court won’t say which cases from its November 26 conference it rejected, until Monday morning, December 2. Because the Virginia case wasn’t accepted today, chances are very high that it will be on the December 2 list of cases rejected. But sometimes the Court puts a case on its conference and can’t decide whether or not to hear that case. So it is still possible that the Court will hear the Virginia case. If the Court hasn’t yet made up its mind about that case, next week it will re-list it for a future conference date.
Judd v Libertarian Party of Virginia is the case over the constitutionality of bans on out-of-state circulators. The U.S. District Court, and all three judges on the Fourth Circuit, had rejected Virginia’s ban, so Virginia then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the lower courts.
Another election law case that was on the November 26 conference, and which will also probably be rejected when the December 2 list is published, is Nader v Federal Election Commission, in which Ralph Nader argued that he does have standing to sue the FEC. He had sued the FEC because the FEC did not require the Democratic National Committee and its allies to report their expenses in keeping him off the ballot in many states in 2004. The U.S. Court of Appeals said Nader doesn’t even have standing, and Nader had hoped to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse that opinion.
According to this story, civic leaders in Las Vegas will seek to persuade the Republican Party to hold its 2016 presidential convention in that city. Las Vegas had never been the location of any party’s presidential convention until 2012, when the Libertarian Party met there.
On November 25, the New Mexico Constitution Party asked the State Supreme Court to rule that it should be considered a ballot-qualified party for 2014. The case is Constitution Party of New Mexico v Duran, 34431. The party cites the law that says if the Secretary of State was going to disqualify the party after the 2012 election, she should have notified the party officers of her decision no later than March 15, 2013. Actually she didn’t notify them until July 18, 2013.
Also the law says when a party is disqualified, the state must sent each member of that party a letter, informing the voter. The law says that letter should have been sent no later than April 29, but actually such letters were not sent until November 1. Here is the party’s request to the State Supreme Court to hear the case.
