On December 20, the New York State Court of Appeals, the highest state court in that state, heard arguments in Johnson v Martins, over whether there should be a recount in one very close State Senate race.  The New York law on recounts was written back when New York used mechanical voting machines, and does not seem very useful now that New York votes on paper ballots that are scanned by vote-counting machines.  See this story.  Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the news.

The race is in the 7th State Senate district.  The first count shows Republican Jack Martins with 451 more votes than Democrat Craig Johnson, out of 85,000 ballots.  The web page for the New York State Board of Elections has official general election returns in general from last month’s election, but shows no totals for this race since it is still uncertain.  The Court is likely to rule by December 21.  UPDATE:  on December 20, the Court ruled that no recount should be held.  Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for this news.

The attorneys who filed the Iowa lawsuit over judicial retention requirements have withdrawn their request for injunctive relief.  Therefore, the three State Supreme Court Justices who were ousted by the voters last month will leave the court, regardless of the eventual outcome of the lawsuit.  See this story.  It seems the judges were not comfortable with the idea that they might remain on the court via a technicality.

The Iowa Constitution says judicial retention elections must be on separate ballots, a requirement that the state ignored in last month’s election.  The state put the judicial retention elections on the same ballot that was used to elect federal, state and local officials.

On December 21, a U.S. District Court will hold a trial in Bernbeck v Gale, 4:10-cv-3001.  This is the case that challenges Nebraska’s ban on out-of-state petition circulators, and also challenges the state’s ban on paying circulators on a per-signature basis.  The trial is not expected to last beyond one day.  Most of the facts are not in dispute.  Plaintiffs have already submitted a great deal of evidence showing that these two restrictions substantially increase the cost of getting initiatives on the ballot.  This particular case concerns an initiative in one small city, Stanton.

A somewhat similar case is pending in Nebraska called Citizens in Charge v Gale, but it is not as far along in the process.  That case contains an issue that is not involved in the Bernbeck case.  The Citizens in Charge case challenges the ban on out-of-state circulators, but it also challenges a Nebraska law that sets up a county distribution requirement for statewide non-presidential independent candidates.  The U.S. Supreme Court back in 1969 ruled that statewide petitions cannot have county distribution requirements.  Nebraska already had one such county-distribution requirement declared unconstitutional in 1984.  But the 2007 session of the legislature didn’t seem to remember that, and passed another one.