On January 9, a U.S. District Court in Virginia ordered the State Board of Elections not to mail absentee ballots until the hearing in the ballot access lawsuit at the end of this week. See this story. The state filed an emergency appeal of that order with the Fourth Circuit.
On January 10, a U.S. District Court held oral arguments in Green Party of Tennessee et al v Goins, a lawsuit in which the Green and Constitution Parties challenge the Tennessee ballot access law for new and previously unqualified parties. The law requires slightly more than 40,000 signatures, due April 5. UPDATE: here is a news story about the hearing.
The hearing seemed to go well for the minor parties. The judge seemed unpersuaded that Tennessee has an interest in requiring so many signatures for minor parties, when the state only requires 25 signatures for independent candidates (and 275 signatures for independent presidential candidates). Also he seemed troubled by the early deadline.
Filing for the Arizona Republican and Green Party presidential primaries closed on January 10. Jon Huntsman’s paperwork was rejected by the Secretary of State because his signature was not notarized. He was unable to repair the problem, because he had filed only two hours before the deadline.
Arizona does not require anything except a declaration of candidacy, but it must be notarized. Twenty-three Republicans did qualify.
Six Greens will appear on the Green Party primary ballot: three Arizonans, Gerard Davis, Michael Oatman, and Richard Grayson; also three non-Arizonans, Kent Mesplay, Jill Stein, and Gary Swing.
Leaders of the California legislature are likely to introduce, and support, a bill to ease the definition of “political party”, to compensate for Proposition 14’s practical elimination of the vote test for a party to remain ballot-qualified. The bill will probably be introduced in the next few weeks. It may change the registration membership test from 1% of the last gubernatorial vote, to one-third of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote. It would not take effect this year. That would reduce the registration test from approximately 103,000 members, to approximately 36,000.
A team of experienced attorneys and law school students have drafted this cert petition in Greene v Bartlett, a challenge to the North Carolina ballot access law for independent candidates for U.S. House. The petition will be filed in a few days. Read the text here.
