November 30 is the first day for petitions to be challenged in Chicago. All Chicago city elections are non-partisan, but that does not mean there are no ballot access hurdles for candidates. See this story.
On November 29, a lower Alaska state court in Fairbanks held a hearing in Joe Miller’s lawsuit against the state of Alaska. Miller, the Republican Party nominee for U.S. Senate, had filed the lawsuit to stop the state from certifying Lisa Murkowski as the winner in the U.S. Senate race. The judge in Fairbanks ruled that the case should have been filed in state court in Juneau. See this story. The next step will be for the new judge to decide whether Murkowski should be allowed to intervene in the case. Only then can the case get to the merits. A hearing will be held on Wednesday, December 1.
As of November 29, two potential candidates for upcoming California special legislative elections asked the California Supreme Court for judicial relief, to give them accurate ballot labels, instead of the label “no party preference.”
The upcoming California special legislative elections are the first elections in which California’s top-two system will be in effect. The candidates are Michael Chamness in the 28th State Senate election, and Carol Winkler in the 17th State Senate election. Chamness is a registered member of the Coffee Party, and he wants to run with “My party preference is the Coffee Party” on the ballot next to his name. Winkler’s voter registration card is filled out to show that she is an Independent (not just a normal Declines to State voter). She wants “Independent candidate” on the ballot next to her name. But under the implementing law for California’s new election system, they cannot have those labels on the ballot. Yet, members of the six ballot-qualified parties can have their parties identified on the ballot.
The proposed intervenors wish to become part of the lawsuit Field v Bowen, which has this case number in the State Supreme Court: S188436. Here is the brief of the original plaintiffs in the State Supreme Court.
The Massachusetts Libertarian Party will ask for a rehearing before all the judges of the First Circuit, in Barr v Galvin. This is the case over whether Bob Barr should have been on the ballot in Massachusetts in November 2008 as the Libertarian Party presidential nominee. The only way that unqualified parties ever place nominees on the ballot in Massachusetts is with petitions that name the party’s candidates. In 2008 the Massachusetts Libertarian Party wanted to complete its petition early, so it listed George Phillies on the ballot as its presidential candidate. In 2007 the Secretary of State had told the party that it could list a stand-in, and replace him with the actual presidential nominee after the party’s national convention was over. When the party followed this advice, it was shocked to be told in 2008 that it could not replace Phillies with Barr.
The party had then sued, and the U.S. District Court had ruled that Massachusetts’ behavior violated the Equal Protection part of the 14th amendment, because Massachusetts and all states let qualified parties revise their national tickets. The U.S. District Court ordered Massachusetts to list Barr on the ballot instead of Phillies. But on November 16, 2010, the First Circuit had reversed the U.S. District Court decision. Obviously the First Circuit’s decision doesn’t impact what has already happened, but it makes a bad situation for future presidential campaigns. The decision also impacts Maine and New Hampshire, two other states in the First Circuit that don’t permit presidential stand-ins.
The Libertarian Party request for a rehearing is due December 14.
On November 29, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that it had decided last Tuesday to hear the Arizona public funding case. Technically, it is two cases that the Court is combining: McComish v Bennett, 10-239; and Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom PAC v Bennett, 10-238.
The issue is whether a state’s public funding for candidates program may provide extra public funding for candidates who have privately-funded opponents with a great deal of resources. This will be the second case the Supreme Court has ever taken that concerns public funding for candidates. The first was Buckley v Valeo, which upheld the presidential public funding system in 1976. See this story by Joan Biskupic.