Coconino County, Arizona, Superior Court Judge Joe Lodge is a declared write-in candidate in the Libertarian primary, running for re-election. He was originally elected as a Democrat some years ago. His attempt to run for re-election as a Democrat this year was thwarted when his declaration of candidacy to run in the Democratic primary was ruled invalid, because he forgot to specify which seat he was seeking.

He then filed as a write-in candidate in the Libertarian primary. But now his Democrat opponent has filed a lawsuit, saying he can’t be a candidate in the Libertarian Party primary because he tried and failed to get on the Democratic Party ballot. The new lawsuit seems illogical. Judge Lodge isn’t a “sore loser” because he didn’t lose the Democratic primary; he failed to run. Arizona does have a law that says a candidate who attempts to petition and has a petition failure can not then run as a write-in, but that law logically cannot apply because he isn’t running in the Democratic primary as a write-in; he has entered an entirely new race, the race for the Libertarian nomination. See this story.

Marilyn Marks is an activist concerned about the accuracy of vote-counting machines. She has been fighting for years to force the city of Aspen, Colorado, to let her see ballots from recent city elections. Even though she did win that fight earlier around the 2009 ballots, and even though she won on the merits, she is still being blocked from seeing the 2011 ballots, according to this story. The legislature this year changed the state Open Records law to include old ballots. Of course, when she or anyone looks at old ballots, there is no way for the viewer to know which voter cast which ballot. Examining the ballots enables a hand re-count to be conducted.