On May 29, the Republican Party of Sanders County, Montana, filed a federal lawsuit, to overturn the Montana law that makes it a criminal offense for a political party to endorse a candidate for state court judge. Montana elects state court trial judges in non-partisan elections. The case is Sanders County Republican Central Committee v Bullock, 6:12-cv-46. The case is assigned to Judge Charles Lovell.
Eric Golub has this op-ed in the Washington Times. He says that Ron Paul supporters should not be permitted to attend the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August. His column does not acknowledge that many official delegates to that convention are Ron Paul supporters.
On June 26, the Republican National Committee, and a prospective donor to the party who lives in Alabama, filed a lawsuit against the federal law that limits how much money an individual may donate to a national committee of a political party. The case is McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission, 1:12-cv-1034. It is filed in Washington, D.C., and the plaintiffs have requested a three-judge court, which is the norm for lawsuits that challenge federal campaign finance laws. The lawsuit also challenges the law that limits an individual’s total donations in any two-year period to all federal candidates and to political parties, combined, to a certain amount of money. Here is the brief.
Under current federal campaign law, political parties have more restrictions relative to receiving donations and spending money than any other type of group. Thanks to Dan Tokaji for the link.
On June 22, Georgia filed a motion to dismiss the ballot access lawsuit filed last month by the Green Party and the Constitution Party. Although the state’s brief is 17 pages long, not once does it mention either of the precedents that the case relies on. The lawsuit is Green Party of Georgia v State of Georgia and Brian Kemp, 1:12-cv-1822. The lawsuit charges that Georgia’s ballot access law, as applied to presidential candidates, requires too many signatures.
The parties base their case on Anderson v Celebrezze, and Bergland v Harris. In Anderson v Celebrezze, the U.S. Supreme Court said that states must be more lenient in presidential elections, than for other office. Bergland v Harris is an 11th circuit decision from 1985 that repeated that holding, and said Georgia’s requirement at that time, for president, might be unconstitutionally difficult. At the time the requirement for president was 2.5% of the number of registered voters. The 11th circuit remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court, but then the legislature lowered the petition requirement to 1% of the number of registered voters and the case ended.
The state’s brief mentions all the ballot access precedents that upheld Georgia’s requirements for office other than President, but nowhere mentions either Anderson v Celebrezze or Bergland v Harris.
This San Francisco Bay Guardian article describes the political maneuvering in San Francisco concerning Instant Runoff Voting and a proposed repeal of that system, which was first approved in San Francisco in 2002. Earlier this year, an attempt to repeal IRV was defeated in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Now a new attempt, to repeal it only for the executive offices, is under way.
