Tom Barrow, a candidate for Mayor of Detroit, is seeking a court injunction to prevent his rival, write-in candidate Mike Duggan, from even distributing literature explaining how to cast a write-in vote. Barrow claims that because Duggan is not on the ballot, therefore he also can’t be a write-in candidate. See this story.
On July 12, an Oregon State Appeals Court issued a ruling in a case that challenges a state law that says no one may simultaneously be a volunteer petitioner for one initiative, while being paid to get signatures on another initiative. See this story. The Court said the issue is moot.
On July 11, the Michigan State Appeals Court ruled in Wilcoxon v City of Detroit Election Commission, 317012, that signatures on nominating petitions are valid even if the signer fails to enter the date of signing. The decision says that the circulator is free to add the date. Here is the 12-page opinion. This opinion is similar to one won in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last year. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
Eliot Spitzer, seeking the Democratic nomination for New York City Comptroller, needed 3,750 valid signatures of registered Democrats by July 11. Since he started getting signatures only five days before the deadline, his campaign paid petitioners $800 per day. New York state election law forbids paying petitioners on a per-signature basis. See this story, written by a college student who helped collect the signatures. The student reports that he collected over 200 signatures in his two days of work.
The Spitzer campaign submitted approximately 27,000 signatures on the deadline. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
On July 12, the New York State Board of Elections informed the U.S. District Court, Eastern District, that it has decided not to appeal Credico v New York State Board of Elections. The Board had earlier said it would appeal, and had obtained an extension of time to write its brief.
Credico is the decision, handed down on June 19, that struck down New York’s discriminatory law regarding which candidates may be listed twice on general election ballots. The law struck down said that if two ballot-qualified parties nominate the same person for any particular office, that candidate is listed twice on the ballot; but if two unqualified parties nominate the same person, that candidate can only be listed once.
The decision is valuable as a precedent that even if a ballot access burden is not severe, it is still unconstitutional if there is no genuine state interest in the discriminatory policy.
