What will probably be the final lawsuit on whether President Obama meets the Constitutional Qualifications to be President has a conference date in the U.S. Supreme Court. The lead plaintiff is Ed Noonan, who won the American Independent Party non-binding presidential primary in California last year. Two other plaintiffs are individuals who ran in major party presidential primaries last year. The case is Noonan v Bowen, 12A606.

This case was filed in the California Supreme Court on December 4, and on December 6 that Court refused to hear it. In the California Supreme Court it was case S207078. The attorney who filed the case, Orly Taitz, then asked the U.S. Supreme Court for injunctive relief. She did that on December 11, and on December 13 Justice Anthony Kennedy denied it. Then, the case was refiled in front of Chief Justice John Roberts on December 26, and he has put it on the Court’s conference of February 15. Of course, that is almost a month after Inauguration Day.

Activists in Alabama, and in Tennessee, are each working for fairer ballot access by lobbying the state legislature. Here is the Tennessee group’s facebook page, and here is the Alabama group’s page. The Alabama lobbying is further along and probably a bill will be introduced in the next five days. The Tennessee group is starting to look for sponsors.

On January 9, the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, unanimously ruled in favor of Democratic nominee Cecilia F. Tkaczyk, in the election contest over who won the election for State Senate, 46th district, a district near Albany.

The Republican nominee, George A. Amedore, won the race by 37 votes, but 99 votes were never counted because of procedural errors made by local election officials. The January 9 court ruling said the 99 uncounted votes should be counted. It is still somewhat statistically unlikely that counting 99 more votes will erase a margin of 37 votes, of course. See this story. Both the Republican Judges and the Democratic Judges ruled in favor of counting the disputed ballots.

The original returns, by party, are: Democratic 55,408, Working Families 5,809, Green 1,387. All these votes were cast for Tkaczyk. Votes for Amedore came from these party lines: Republican 51,273, Conservative 8,274, Independence 3,594. It is very rare for the Green Party to ever cross-endorse a major party nominee, but in this case the Green Party did cross-endorse the Democrat.