On August 2, the Eleventh Circuit issued an opinion in Graham v Georgia Attorney General, 22-13396.  This is the lawsuit filed by the Georgia Libertarian Party against a new law that says donors can give more money to Democratic and Republican nominees for Governor and Lieutenant Governor than they may give to the nominees of other parties for those offices.  The Eleventh Circuit says the case is moot.  It vacated the U.S. District Court decision that had said the plaintiffs lack standing.  The Eleventh Circuit did not decide the standing issue.

The decision is by Judge Elizabeth L. Branch and is also signed by Judges Kevin Newsom and Robert J.. Luck.  All three are Trump appointees.  The oral argument had been on December 11, 2023.

This is the second time in the last three weeks in which a U.S. Court of Appeals has said an election law case involving minor parties is moot.  The first was the New York lawsuit against the May independent candidate petition deadline.

It is very foolish for courts to declare such cases moot.  All it means is that someone files a new lawsuit over the same issue, which is wasteful for the courts as well as the litigants.

According to this story, the chair of the Democratic national convention “certified” that Tim Walz is the Democratic nominee for vice-president on August 7.  However, the story does not allege that the Democratic delegates have voted for vice-president yet.

A separate source about the vice-presidential nomination, a Democratic delegate, says there has not been any vote of the delegates for vice-president.  There will be such a roll-call vote at the physical convention in Chicago, but the story says that vote isn’t binding.

Friday, August 8, is the last day of the trial in Albany, New York, over whether Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., should be on the New York ballot.  He is being challenged on the basis that he filled our his Declaration of Candidacy incorrectly, in the portion that asks for the address of his domicile.  Cartwright v Kennedy, Albany Co. Supreme Court.

If he loses this case, and is kept off the ballot, that result would seem to contradict the U.S. Supreme Court unanimous ruling in Trump v Anderson, decided on March 4, 2024.  That was the Colorado case on whether Donald Trump should be on the Colorado Republican presidential primary ballot.  The Colorado Supreme Court had ruled that Trump was ineligible because of the “insurrection” clause in the 14th amendment, and that therefore he should be off the ballot.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Colorado Supreme Court, but it did not contradict the Colorado Supreme Court’s finding that Trump had engaged in insurrection.  The U.S. Supreme Court expressed no opinion on that.  But it said it didn’t matter, because the relationship between the people and the president is so fundamental, that it would implicitly violate Article Two for various states to keep a presidential candidate off the ballot when other states were putting him or her on the ballot.  The Court said that would create an untenable “patchwork.”  The Court did not tie that finding to the 14th amendment insurrection clause.  Nor did the Court limit its finding to major party presidential candidates.

The same logic ought to apply to Kennedy.  If the U.S. Supreme Court could keep a candidate on the ballot even though the trial court finding had been that he had violated a constitutional qualification, surely the same logic would prevent someone from being removed from one state’s ballot on the grounds that he made a mistake on a candidacy qualification form.

The key quote from the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v Anderson is, “The ‘patchwork’ would likely result from state enforcement that would sever the link that the Framers found so crucial between the National Government and the people of the United States as a whole.”