Last year, some voters who supported Joe Miller for U.S. Senate sued the state of Alaska, arguing that counting misspelled write-in votes for Lisa Murkowski violates the federal Voting Rights Act. That case is still pending. It is Rudolph v Treadwell, 10-cv-0268, in U.S. District Court. The parallel cases filed by Joe Miller himself were expedited and are already over with. The Rudolph case has not been expedited.

Rudolph and his fellow voter-plaintiffs argue that when the state said misspelled write-ins are valid (if voter intent could be determined) that is a change, and Alaska didn’t ask the Voting Rights section for permission to make that change (although the state did ask the Voting Rights Section to pre-clear its rule letting voters see the list of write-in candidates, and the Voting Rights Section did approve that). The state will probably argue that the state has always allowed misspelled write-ins to count. See this story.

The same attorney who filed Rudolph v Treadwell also filed a case in state court on January 10. It is Perry v Treadwell, 4FA-11-00973.

The Massachusetts Libertarian Party has decided to place statewide Libertarian Party nominees on the 2012 general election ballot under the ballot label “Liberty” instead of Libertarian. The two statewide offices up in 2012 in Massachusetts are President and U.S. Senate. The Libertarian Party is not now ballot-qualified in Massachusetts.

The reason for the label “Liberty” instead of “Libertarian” in 2012, is that the party prefers not to be a ballot-qualified party during midterm years, but does prefer to be a ballot-qualified party during presidential years. In 2012, there is a fair possibility that the party’s nominee would receive over 3% for U.S. Senate, as it did in 2008 for U.S. Senate. If that happens in 2012, then the party would be ballot-qualified for 2014. But, it doesn’t want to be ballot-qualified in 2014, because then it would suffer from very difficult procedures for the party’s candidates to get on the party’s primary ballot.

So, if the Liberty Party polls enough votes in 2012 to be an qualified party in 2014 (which would be undesirable), the ballot-qualified Liberty Party could be abandoned in 2014. In 2014, the Libertarian Party (an unqualified party) would not be hampered with an unwanted primary ballot with difficult ballot access. 2014 petitions would be in the name of the Libertarian Party.

In 2014, it is extremely likely that the Libertarian Party would poll enough votes to become a ballot-qualified party for 2016. This is because Massachusetts has five statewide offices up in mid-term years, and it is easy for any minor party to poll 3% of the vote for the lesser offices, such as Treasurer, especially since the Republican Party sometimes doesn’t run a full slate for these lesser statewide offices. Having the party be ballot-qualified in 2016 would be desirable, because then the party would be on the ballot automatically for president in 2016, and also it would have its own presidential primary. Ballot access in presidential primaries in Massachusetts is very lenient; the party chair merely tells the Secretary of State whom to list.

All of this is very confusing. The election laws of Massachusetts are to blame. Those laws make primary ballot access extremely difficult for small ballot-qualified parties. A member of a small qualified party needs 10,000 signatures of party members or independents, in order to get on the party’s primary ballot. If the party only has, for example, 20,000 registered voters, the burden is severe. It would be desirable if minor party activists in Massachusetts would lobby for a more sensible policy on how candidates get on the primary ballot.

According to this story, South Carolina State Senator Shane Massey (R-Edgefield) plans to introduce a bill, preventing anyone who was ever convicted of a felony (or, perhaps, just certain felonies) from running for office. The U.S. Constitution sets forth the requirements for anyone to run for, or to hold, federal elected office. Generally state Constitutions also set forth the requirements for people to hold state elected office. Therefore, it is likely this proposed bill could only affect candidates for county and municipal office.