Brian Irving is coordinating appointments between ballot access activists and North Carolina State Representatives who are on the House Elections Committee. He has appointments with six such state legislators at various times on April 30, Tuesday. Other proponents of improved ballot access will be joining him. If you live anywhere near Raleigh and you wish to help, his e-mail is brian@libertypoint.org.
The U.S. Supreme Court will be releasing opinions on these dates: May 13, 20, 28; and June 3, 10, 17, and 24. These are all Mondays, except that May 28 is a Tuesday. Among the decisions will be two election law decisions.
Arizona v InterTribal Council of Arizona, 12-71, was argued March 18. The issue is whether a state can require more information on the federal voter registration postcard than the federal government itself requires.
Shelby County, Alabama v Holder, 12-96, was argued February 27. The issue is whether section five of the federal Voting Rights Act is constitutional. Section five requires certain jurisdictions to get approval from the U.S. Justice Department before changing election laws and practices. The Act has also been construed to require political parties in the covered jurisdictions to also get approval before changing bylaws that relate to nominations.
The U.S. Supreme Court accepted a third election law case on February 19, McCutcheon v FEC, 12-536. The issue is the federal law that limits an individual’s contributions to all federal candidates together to no more than $46,200 in a two-year period. The oral argument for that won’t be set until October 2013 at the earliest. The FEC’s brief is due on July 18.
The April 26 Fort Wayne News-Sentinel has this editorial, which ran a few hours before the convictions in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary petition fraud prosecution. Toward the end of the editorial is a suggestion that Indiana’s ballot access laws be eased.
On September 9, 2012, a U.S. District Court ruled that Maine does not violate the U.S. Constitution when it bans anonymous blogs that make commentary about a candidate for public office. The court refused to stop the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics from fining Dennis Bailey for refusing to identify himself on his own blog, “The Cutler Files.” UPDATE: here is a copy of the decision. Thanks to Robbin Stewart for the link.
This is not new news, but because this outcome had not previously been reported either here, or in many other press outlets, it is being mentioned now even though it happened over six months ago. The decision is Bailey v State of Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, 1:11-cv-179. The Maine law exempts periodicals from the disclosure requirement. The Court ruled that Bailey’s webpage was not a true periodical, because it was set up to post damaging material about Eliot Cutler, an independent candidate for Governor of Maine, and that it was never intended to be a permanent blog. It said the blog was more like a “negative campaign flyer than a periodical publication.”
In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in McIntyre v Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334, that the U.S. Constitution protects anonymous speech about elections. The Maine decision distinguishes that by noting that the Ohio case involved speech about a ballot question, not a candidate. Also the Maine decision says that Citizens United v FEC upheld mandatory disclosure about the identity of speakers, concerning speech about candidates for public office. Bailey did not appeal the decision in his own case; probably one reason is that his fine was only $200.
