According to this story, the Governor of North Carolina, and also the legislature of North Carolina, are each hiring private attorneys to defend the state from the lawsuit filed yesterday against several new North Carolina election laws. The state’s Attorney General, Roy Cooper, says his office will defend the state laws. However, the Governor and the Republican majority in the legislature remember that Cooper, who is a Democrat, criticized the laws that are under attack while they were going through the legislature.

The lawsuit attacks the new law over government photo-ID for voters at the polls, a reduction in the number of days for early voting, a repeal of the law that lets unregistered individuals register at the early voting centers just before they vote, and restrictions on provisional ballots. The lawsuit is called U.S.A. v State of North Carolina.

On October 1, the U.S. Supreme Court released a list of eight cases that the Court is accepting for full review. None of the eight is an election law case. One election law case had been on the September 30 conference. That one case is Corsi v Ohio Election Commission, 12-1442. The fact that the Corsi case was not accepted does not mean that it won’t be accepted later, but the odds for this case eventually being heard are now somewhat lower. This case challenged the Ohio Election Commission, which had required Corsi, a small-budget blogger who blogs about candidates and local politics, to register and disclose his finances.

On September 30, the Michigan Libertarian Party filed this cert petition with the U.S. Supreme Court in Libertarian Party of Michigan v Ruth Johnson. The issue is whether sore loser laws in Michigan and nationally can be applied to presidential primaries. The Michigan Secretary of State wouldn’t put Gary Johnson on the ballot as the Libertarian nominee last year because his name had appeared on the Michigan Republican presidential primary, held in January 2012. Johnson’s name was on the Republican presidential primary ballots in 7 other states in 2012, but no other state kept him off the general election ballot for that reason.

UPDATE: the case number is 13-421.