On January 17, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted ordered that William M. O’Neill be placed on the Democratic primary ballot for Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, even though the counties who had checked O’Neill’s petitions had said he had only 993 valid signatures. 1,000 are required. Husted independently examined some of the supposedly invalid signatures, and determined that at least seven of them were valid. See this story.

Husted acknowledged that adding O’Neill’s name to the March 6 ballot would cause some inconvenience to certain counties that had already begun preparations for printing and mailing ballots. The Virginia presidential primary, and the Ohio primary, are on the same day, March 6.

On the afternoon of January 17, the 6th circuit heard oral arguments in Kurita v The State Primary Board of the Tennessee Democratic Party, the case over whether a political party that holds a primary may set aside the results of that primary and award the nomination to the person who came in second. The dispute arose in 2008. See this story, which has information about what each side in the lawsuit said today, but doesn’t seem to try to predict which way the 3 judges seemed to be leaning. The three judges are Ronald Gilman and Eric Clay, Clinton appointees, and Alice Batchelder, a Bush Sr. appointee.

Public Policy Polls has this interesting general election poll for the presidential race, including results in case Stephen Colbert were the Americans Elect nominee, and Gary Johnson were the Libertarian Party nominee.