On July 17, U.S. District Richard W. Story dismissed the Green Party and Constitution Party ballot access lawsuit which challenges Georgia’s petition requirement for minor party and independent presidential ballot access. The order is only four pages, and the substantive part is only one paragraph. Judge Story said that because the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld Georgia’s 5% petition for Governor in Jenness v Fortson, and because lower courts had upheld Georgia’s 5% petition for Congress in Cartwright v Barnes, and Coffield v Kemp, therefore the Georgia presidential petition of 1% must be constitutional.

The judge didn’t mention Bergland v Harris, nor Anderson v Celebrezze, both of which said states have a diminished interest in keeping presidential candidates off their ballots, relative to other office. Bergland v Harris is an 11th circuit precedent, and Georgia is in the 11th circuit. Bergland v Harris said that Georgia’s 2.5% petition might very well be unconstitutional as applied to presidential candidates, and remanded the case back to a lower court. Before the lower court could act, the Georgia legislature lowered the 2.5% petition down to 1%.

On July 17, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors heard testimony on three separate proposals to limit the use of Ranked-Choice Voting in city elections. After hearing from approximately 40 members of the public, the Board voted unanimously to send all three proposals back to the Rules Committee, which almost certainly means that the issue will not come up again for several months.

On July 31, at 9 a.m., a Vermont Superior Court in Montpelier will hear Anderson v State of Vermont, 480-6-12. This is the case filed by the Justice Party over Vermont’s awkward procedures for submitting petitions for independent and minor party candidates. For those kind of petitions, Vermont requires the petitioning groups to turn in signatures to each town clerk, then collect the signatures and physically take them to the Secretary of State’s office. Sometimes the town clerks don’t check the petitions very quickly. Rocky Anderson submitted the needed 1,000 valid signatures by the deadline but he is still not on the ballot because the town clerks took too long to check the signatures.

By contrast, primary candidates running for statewide office can submit their petitions directly to the Secretary of State. Federal law requires all state election offices to maintain a statewide list of the registered voters.