On February 6, Newt Gingrich withdrew from the lawsuit Perry v Judd, which was filed last year to challenge Virginia’s ban on out-of-state circulators. The case is still alive because Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum intervened in the case earlier, and they haven’t withdrawn. UPDATE: according to this Washington Post story, Huntsman and Santorum also withdrew, so the case is finished before it could achieve anything worthwhile.

If one of them remains in the case, it can still proceed to a declaratory judgment. U.S. District Court Judge John A. Gibney already wrote in this case, “It is highly unlikely that the residency requirement will withstand the First Amendment challenge.” He also said, “The Court agrees with the rationale in Nader v Brewer.” Nader v Brewer is a 9th circuit case that struck down Arizona’s ban on out-of-state petitioners.

However, Judge Gibney was only dealing with injunctive relief. He hasn’t formally made a decision on whether the Virginia restriction on out-of-state circulators is unconstitutional. If all the intervenors withdraw from the lawsuit, there won’t be a decision on declaratory relief and the entire case will have achieved nothing.

Similarly, in 1992, the Alaska Libertarian and U.S. Taxpayers Parties won injunctive relief against Alaska’s early August petition deadline for presidential petitions. But because they never went back and got declaratory relief, the law was never held unconstitutionally early and survives to this day. Also, in Hawaii in 1986, the Libertarian Party got an injunction against Hawaii’s April petition deadline for new parties, but because the party never went back and got a declaratory judgment, the law was not struck down, and since then Hawaii has made the deadline even earlier, and moved it to February. Thanks to Josh Gerstein for this news.

On February 6, a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania jury convicted State Representative H. William DeWeese of using state resources to work on partisan political activity during the period 2000-2006. DeWeese was in the Democratic leadership in the House during those years. He directed staff to use government employees and government computers to help challenge the 2004 petition of Ralph Nader, and the 2006 statewide Green Party petition. See this story. DeWeese is currently in the legislature, and has been a state legislator since he was elected in a special election in May, 1976.

It is possible this conviction will have some relevance to Ralph Nader’s pending lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and its allies, over what was done by Democrats to Nader ballot access efforts in 2004. The Maine Supreme Court is still considering Nader’s lawsuit. Also a District of Columbia appeals court is still considering whether to force a Washington, D.C. bank to turn over Nader’s funds to his Democratic 2004 challengers.

Over the weekend, the Oregon Republican Party decided to let independent voters vote in its 2012 primary, but only for the three statewide state offices. Oregon has no U.S. Senate race up in 2012, but it has these statewide offices: Attorney General, Treasurer, and Secretary of State. See this story. The party says it is an experiment and it will see how it works before possibly opening up its primary later for district and county partisan offices.

The party says the presidential primary will not be open to independent voters in 2012. Although the story seems to say that the Republican National Committee won’t allow the state party to do that, it seems more likely that the Republican National Committee only has a rule that says it is too late to change the rules for presidential primaries in 2012, not that the national Republican Party has a rule in general against open presidential primaries. There are many Republican presidential primaries open to independent voters, all across the nation.