The Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE) will hold its annual board meeting on July 15, Sunday, in Baltimore, at the Inner Harbor Holiday Inn, 301 W. Lombard Street, at noon. The meeting will be in the Harbor 2 Room. The Green Party is kindly making this room available to COFOE. The national convention of the Green Party will meet on the day before, Saturday, July 14, to choose a presidential and vice-presidential nominee, in the Chesapeake Ballroom of the same hotel. Then, on Sunday morning, the national committee of the Green Party will meet at 9 a.m. in the Harbor 2 Room, but that meeting is expected to be finished by noon, making the space available for the COFOE meeting.

COFOE was formed in 1985, and is a loose coalition of most of the nation’s nationally-organized parties, other than the two major parties. Also included are organizations that are interested in the legal problems of political parties and independent candidates. The COFOE board currently includes representatives from the Conservative Party, the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Reform Party, the Socialist Party, the Working Families Party, Free & Equal, and the Committee for a Unified Independent Party.

Anyone is free to attend the board meeting.

Newspapers in Tennessee have run stories recently about the Green Party and the Constitution Party nominees for public office. For example, see this story. Both parties were put on the ballot by a U.S. District Court, in February 2012. They are the first two parties in Tennessee to be recognized since the period 1968-1972, when the American Party was on the ballot.

The Green Party has nominated six candidates for Congress, and five for the State House. The Constitution Party has only nominated one candidate, who is running for the U.S. Senate. The twelve candidates from these two parties could conceivably be removed from the November ballot, if the state succeeds in persuading the 6th circuit to reverse the decision of the U.S. District Court.

On June 26, late in the day, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Lovell refused to issue an injunction against the Montana law that makes it a crime for political parties to endorse candidates in judicial races. The case is Sanders County Republican Central Committee v Bullock, cv12-46-H.

The judge did reject the state’s argument that the party doesn’t have standing to challenge the ban. The state had argued that since the party has no bylaw authorizing such endorsements, therefore the lawsuit should be dismissed. But Judge Lovell said if the party did pass such a bylaw, that alone would be a criminal act, and that the party is not required to pass a bylaw before suing.

The constitutionality of the ban is still not formally settled, and a further hearing will be held on September 25. In the meantime, both sides are likely to collect evidence about the effect of party endorsements in judicial races. That will probably involve research from states with non-partisan judicial elections in which there is no ban on party endorsements.