On September 19, the North Dakota Supreme Court refused to put this year’s medical marijuana initiative on the ballot. The Court said it would explain its reasoning later. The case is Zaiser v Jaeger, 20120346.

This year, North Dakota statewide initiatives needed 13,452 valid signatures. Proponents submitted over 20,000 signatures, but the Secretary of State determined that many of the signatures were forged, so he invalidated the measure without determining exactly how many signatures are valid and how many are forged. Proponents of the initiative asked the Court to declare that an initiative can’t be invalidated without a determination of how many signatures are valid, but they did not prevail. When the Court issues its opinion, it is possible it will not decide the issue and will perhaps merely say that the lawsuit had been filed too late. Some ballots had already been printed.

Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, and California are the only states that still ban out-of-state circulators for statewide initiatives, and the Alaska, California and Montana restrictions cannot be enforced because the Ninth Circuit already ruled that out-of-state circulators cannot be banned. The District of Columbia also bans them. Probably if North Dakota did not ban out-of-state circulators, there would have been no petition fraud. Proponents of the North Dakota medical marijuana initiative hired eight members of the University of North Dakota football team, and they have been charged with forgery. If proponents had been able to hire out-of-state circulators, chances are high they would have hired honest, talented professionals and the initiative would now be on the ballot.

The South Carolina ballot will contain only two candidates for State House, 26th district. They are Raye Felder, who is on the ballot as an independent, and Jeremy C. Walters, Libertarian. Felder is actually a Republican, but she was eliminated from the Republican primary ballot because she didn’t file copies of her campaign finance papers both electronically and on paper by the March deadline. Over 100 candidates for state and local office in South Carolina made the same legal error.

In South Carolina, independent candidates are on the ballot as “by petition” instead of “independent.” Here is Walters’ campaign web page; here is Felder’s campaign web page. The district is new and is centered on Fort Mill, which is a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina. Walters got some publicity last month when he appeared at a joint campaign appearance with Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson.

The old district 26 was in a different part of the state, so the incumbent, Eric Bikas, a Republican, didn’t run for re-election in any district. Bikas is age 26 and several months ago was told to leave the legislature because he appeared on the House floor without a coat and tie. See this story.

In April 2012, Nicholas Fontana was appointed to the Arizona House of Representatives to represent the 29th district. He is the first independent state legislator since Arizona because a state in 1912 (except that his predecessor in that district had switched to being an independent but then had resigned a few days later).

Fontana is not running for re-election. The only candidates who will be on the ballot in the 29th district are two Democrats. Each Arizona state house district elects two members.