On February 3, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Haynes invalidated Tennessee’s new ballot access law for minor parties. The case is Green Party of Tennessee and Constitution Party of Tennessee v Hargett, 3:11-00692. The decision is 90 pages. It strikes down the early April petition deadline, and also strikes down the 40,029 signature petition requirement. And, it says that it is unconstitutional to force minor parties to nominate by primary, at least in the context of an open primary state that doesn’t have party registration. It strikes down the 2011 law that reserves the best positions on the ballot for the two major parties.

The decision also puts the Constitution and Green Parties on the 2012 ballot, based on the evidence that in the recent past, both parties did collect several thousand signatures on petitions to get on the Tennessee ballot.

On February 3, the Federal Election Commission announced that it has approved Buddy Roemer’s matching funds submission. Roemer is the only presidential candidate who has even applied so far. Jill Stein is working hard on qualifying. Candidates need to raise at least $5,000 in each of twenty states to qualify. Donations larger than $250 are legal, but for purposes of primary season matching funds, a contribution greater than $250 only counts as $250.

On February 3, a Wisconsin State Appeals Court vacated a lower court ruling that had told state election officials to check for duplicate signatures on the statewide recall petitions. In Wisconsin, any adult citizen/resident of the state may sign recall petitions. Therefore, there is no predetermined list of registered voters to check the petition against. The lower court had said that elections officials at least had to weed out duplicate signatures.

Unless there is a further appeal, opponents of the recall will now need to do the work of challenging duplicate signatures. See this story. There are two statewide recall petitions, one for Governor and one for Lieutenant Governor.