According to this story, some Illinois Republican leaders who support Mitt Romney now regret that they did not challenge Rick Santorum’s petitions in some districts. Illinois law says all petitions are valid if no one challenges, even if the number of signatures is obviously lower than the legal requirement.

This is additional evidence that the purpose of restrictive ballot access laws is not to block “frivolous” or “vanity” candidates, but to eliminate competitive candidates. No Romney supporter would be expressing sorrow that Santorum placed his delegates on the ballot in all districts if Santorum weren’t perceived as a threat. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.

This article mentions some of the wealthy individuals and companies that are contributing to the Arizona initiative to impose a top-two system in that state.

On March 12, a California Superior Court in Shasta County issued a 4-page order in Shasta County Citizens for Justice v City of Shasta Lake, cv-174130. Recently, a recall petition was circulated to recall a city council member in the city of Shasta Lake. The councilmember obtained evidence that someone who is not a resident of Shasta Lake helped circulate the petition. UPDATE: here is the decision.

The councilmember asked the court to order the city not to hold the recall. But the court declined to stop that election. The judge wrote, “Even assuming there was evidence that signatures were gathered by a non-resident circulator, there is no statutory or constitutional authority for the Court to enjoin a recall election on the ground that signatures on a recall petition were obtained by a non-resident petition circulator. The statutory scheme for remedies relating to improper signature gathering is to hold the circulator accountable, not the signator.”

California and Pennsylvania are the only states that still try to enforce in-district, or in-jurisdiction, residence requirements on circulators. Recently, some California elections officials have warned circulators of in-lieu of filing petitions that the circulator must be a resident of the county and district. This has been frustrating, because the constitutionality of the California in-district residency requirement is pending in federal court, and the Secretary of State has told the court that the residency requirement is not enforced. However, she has not communicated that to county elections officials.