On January 20 and January 21, two pending cases in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia were transferred to a brand-new U.S. District Court Judge. The new judge is Beryl A. Howell, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 23, 2010. Before she was a Judge, she had been a federal prosecutor and also had been General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

The two cases are: (1) Libertarian Party v D.C. Board of Elections, which challenges the policy of the District of Columbia Board of Elections over counting write-in votes for presidential candidates who filed a declaration of write-in candidacy; (2) Nader v Federal Election Commission, which challenges the FEC’s failure to take any action at all over Ralph Nader’s complaint that the Democratic Party in 2004 had spent a great deal of money trying to keep him off the ballot and had not reported these expenses.

The write-in case had been filed on August 7, 2009, and the only action so far (besides filing briefs) was that the judge who formerly had the case had asked the U.S. Justice Department to express an opinion. The Department had declined to do so. The Nader case had been filed on June 11, 2010. Generally, when a new judge is confirmed, cases are re-assigned to the new judge, to relieve the workload on the judges who have been there a while, and to give the new judge something to work on immediately.

On January 20, the leadership of the House of Representatives said there will be a floor vote on January 26 on whether to abolish the public funding program for presidential candidates. See this story. The House leadership says it will bring bills to the floor every week to abolish some particular type of federal spending, and this is the first one in the series. There is apparently no bill introduced yet to take this action, and no committee hearings are expected. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.

The public funding program has been in place ever since 1976. It provides nondiscriminatory public funding in the primary season to any presidential candidate, seeking the nomination of any party (no matter how small), if that candidate raises at least $5,000 from each of 20 states. It also provides general election funding to the presidential campaigns of parties that polled at least 5% of the vote in the previous presidential election. If any new party, or any independent presidential candidate, polls 5% or more, then that campaign gets general election funding after the election is over. The only general election funding received by candidates and parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties has been after the 1980 election, for John Anderson; and for the Reform Party, after the 1996 election and before the 2000 general election.

Chicago has non-partisan elections, and requires 12,500 signatures for anyone running for citywide office to get on the February 22, 2011 ballot. Only two candidates submitted petitions to run for Treasurer, the incumbent, Stephanie D. Neely, and a challenger, Elida M. Cruz. The petitions for Cruz were challenged successfully, so Cruz is off the ballot. The ballot will carry only one candidate for Treasurer. See this story.