On June 25, the Michigan Libertarian Party filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit, seeking an order requiring the Michigan Secretary of State, Ruth Johnson, to list Gary Johnson on the ballot as the Libertarian presidential nominee. The case is Libertarian Party of Michigan v Johnson, 2:12-cv-12782-PDB. Here is the 9-page complaint.

The Secretary of State said on May 3 that she would not print Johnson’s name on the November ballot because his name had appeared on the Republican presidential primary ballot in February this year. Johnson had tried to withdraw but the Secretary of State says his withdrawal was received three minutes too late. There are very few precedents for a case like this, because no state has ever before told a ballot-qualified party that it will not list its actual presidential nominee on the grounds that the actual presidential nominee had run in the presidential primary of some other party. The only exception is that North Carolina tried to prevent John B. Anderson from appearing on the November 1980 ballot as the nominee of the Independent Party, on the grounds that his name had been on the 1980 Republican presidential primary in that state. But a U.S. District Court construed the North Carolina law to not be a barrier to Anderson. The state had then dropped any appeal, but the Democratic National Committee had intervened in the case and appealed to the 4th circuit. However, the 4th circuit also construed the North Carolina law to not apply to Anderson.

Presidential candidates who have run in a major party presidential primary, and then later appeared on the general election ballot as the nominee of a new or minor party that same year, besides Anderson, include Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Robert La Follette in 1924, and David Duke in 1988. Anderson appeared on the November ballot of all 50 states in 1980, even though he had run in 22 Republican presidential primaries that year. One of the 22 Republican presidential primaries Anderson had run in was Michigan’s primary, but Michigan did not try to bar him from the November ballot.

On June 22, Placer County, California, finished counting the votes from the June 5 primary. In the Assembly race, sixth district, three candidates had been on the ballot: Republican incumbent Assemblymember Beth Gaines; Democrat Regy Bronner, and Republican Andy Pugno.

Between the evening of June 5 and Friday afternoon, June 22, the tally had showed Gaines in first place and Bronner in second place. But in a surprise, the last ballots to be counted, late on June 22, put Pugno in second place. Therefore, the November election will list two very conservative Republicans on the ballot, and no one else. No write-in space will appear on the ballot. Both Gaines and Pugno are opponents of same-sex marriage and opponents of any tax increases. See this story. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.

On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed the decision of a 3-judge panel in Maryland, in Fletcher v Lamone, 11-1178. Maryland and a handful of other states now draw congressional and legislative districts under the assumption that prisoners should be tallied (for redistricting purposes) in the community in which they lived before they were imprisoned, instead of in the town where the prison is located.

The 3-judge court had upheld Maryland’s system. Today’s summary affirmance means that other states are now free to follow the same policy, without fear that that method of counting prisoners is unconstitutional.

The effect of Maryland’s system is to give less representation in the U.S. House, and in the state legislature, to communities in which prisons are located. Generally, prisons are in smaller towns, and generally prisoners come from large urban areas, so the Maryland system usually means increased representation for urban areas.