On January 20, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the decision of a 3-judge court in West Virginia. The 3-judge court had invalidated the West Virginia U.S. House district boundaries. Here is the U.S. Supreme Court order, which implies that the Court wants to decide this case for itself. The 3-judge court had struck down the legislature’s redistricting plan because the three districts differed in population. The difference between the district with the highest population, and the district with the lowest population, was three-fourths of 1%.

There is a fair amount of precedent that when the normal petitioning period for minor party and independent candidates is shrunk, due to late redistricting, states must either extend the petitioning deadlines, or reduce the number of signatures needed. Because redistricting is taking a great deal of time to be settled in many states, there will be opportunities in many states this year for some temporary reductions in the number of signatures needed, especially for district office.

On January 20, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an eleven-page unsigned unanimous opinion, telling the 3-judge U.S. District Court in Texas to redraw the congressional and legislative districts that that court had drawn earlier. See this report from Scotusblog. Here is the order. See this newspaper story.

Newspapers in Texas seem to have just noticed that the Democratic Party’s lawsuit against the Green Party was settled, back on December 17, 2011. This news was blogged on this web page more than a month ago, and was also in the January 1, 2012 print edition of Ballot Access News. See this recent story in the Texas Tribune.