New Jersey elects state officers in odd years. On June 7, the deadline for independent candidates to file in the 2011 New Jersey elections, Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford, a registered Democrat, filed to run as an independent candidate for State Senate, 2nd district. Langford is irked at the incumbent Democrat, Senator James Whelan, because Whelan supports the Governor’s plan for the state to set up an agency that would diminish Atlantic City’s ability to govern itself.

Whelan, who was Mayor of Atlantic City 1990-2001, is white; Langford is black. The 2nd district (at least with its old pre-2010 census boundaries) leans Democratic, although in 2009 that district elected two Republican Assemblymembers. The State Senate seat in the 2nd district had not been up in 2009.

It is very rare for prominent politicians in New Jersey to ever run outside the two major parties. In most of New Jersey’s counties, the independent and minor party candidates are squeezed into a party column on the far right-hand side of the ballot, headed “Nomination by Petition.” By contrast, all the Democratic nominees are in a column headed by “Democratic” in big letters; and all the Republican nominees are in a similar column headed “Republican.” No one other than Democratic or Republican nominees has been elected to state office in New Jersey since 1880, largely because of the unfavorable ballot format in most counties. Langford is on the ballot, but he has said it is possible he will withdraw later.

On June 9, a 3-judge U.S. District Court ruled from the bench that Maine’s legislature must draw new boundaries for U.S. House districts in time for the 2012 election. The judges announced their decision immediately after hearing oral arguments in Desena v State, 1:11-cv-117.

Maine had argued that its legislature is too busy to draw new boundaries until 2013, and that the old districts are still relatively equal in population and that no harm would come from using the old districts in 2012. See this story. The panel of judges will issue a written opinion in a few weeks. If the legislature doesn’t draw new districts, presumably the court will.

It is very rare for Maine to lose an election law case in federal court. The state has won election law cases in federal court at least four times during the last fifteen years. Federal judges in recent years have even permitted Maine to get away with keeping an independent candidate off the ballot for U.S. Senate even though she followed the ballot access law. She submitted her petitions to the town clerks on the last day permitted for that and the town clerks said they didn’t have time to check the signatures, so the Secretary of State kept her off the ballot and the federal court refused to intervene. That case was Dobson v Dunlap, 576 F.Supp.2d 181 (2008). Also in 2008, another federal judge in Maine kept another independent candidate off the ballot for U.S. Senate by ruling that an entire sheet of signatures should be considered invalid, because one particular voter signed that sheet while the circulator allegedly wasn’t watching. That case was Hoffman v Secretary of State, 574 F.Supp.2d 179 (2008). And, the Maine Green Party lost all of its numerous constitutional ballot access cases against Maine during the 1990’s, and is only on the ballot nowadays because after losing its court battles, it persuaded the legislature to ease the state’s definition of “political party.”

On June 2, the Constitution, Green, and Libertarian Parties of Pennsylvania asked for a rehearing in the case against the Pennsylvania system that puts candidates in extreme financial jeopardy if they submit ballot access petitions that do not have enough valid signatures. The rehearing petition is very strong and is twelve pages long. The case is called Constitution Party of Pennsylvania et al v Cortes.