On January 18, the 10th circuit heard arguments in Constitution Party of Kansas v Biggs, 11-3152. The issue is whether Kansas must let voters register into parties that are not ballot-qualified. The Kansas Secretary of State himself, Kris Kobach, is an attorney, so he went to Denver to represent himself. See this story.

In 1984, the 10th circuit ruled in a Colorado case that states must let voters register into unqualified parties, if those unqualified parties have been politically active in the state. That case was called Baer v Meyer. Since then, other courts have agreed, including the 2nd circuit in a New York case, the New Jersey state courts, and U.S. District Courts in Iowa and Oklahoma.

However, the argument seemed to go badly for the Constitution Party. Two of the three judges seemed to believe that Baer was wrongly decided, and they may overrule it.

On January 17, the Florida Secretary of State’s office posted new voter registration data for all the state’s qualified parties. One of the mildly amusing facts revealed in this registration tally is that Americans Elect, which is ballot-qualified in Florida, only has four registered members.

Americans Elect does not encourage people to register as members of the party. Americans Elect has its own privately-financed on-line presidential primary process, and any registered voter in the United States is free to participate. There is no need for voters to register “Americans Elect” to participate in the group’s activities. Florida law requires that the statewide officers of any party be registered members of that party, however, so Americans Elect had to make sure that its statewide officers were registered into the party.

On January 23, California will release a new voter registration tally, and it will be interesting to see how many California voters have registered “Americans Elect.” Americans Elect is a qualified party in California, and soon new voter registration forms will list Americans Elect as a choice. In the meantime, Californians have been free to register into Americans Elect, by filling out the “Other” line on the voter registration form and writing it in.

On January 17, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted ordered that William M. O’Neill be placed on the Democratic primary ballot for Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, even though the counties who had checked O’Neill’s petitions had said he had only 993 valid signatures. 1,000 are required. Husted independently examined some of the supposedly invalid signatures, and determined that at least seven of them were valid. See this story.

Husted acknowledged that adding O’Neill’s name to the March 6 ballot would cause some inconvenience to certain counties that had already begun preparations for printing and mailing ballots. The Virginia presidential primary, and the Ohio primary, are on the same day, March 6.