On October 24, Michael Osborne, an independent candidate for the Virginia legislature next month, filed a lawsuit in state court against the state’s discriminatory laws on checking signatures.

In Virginia, all candidates running in a primary must petition to get on the primary ballot, but the petitions are not checked for validity. Independent candidate petitions, and the petitions of nominees of unqualified parties, on the other hand, are checked for validity. Osborne’s lawsuit argues that the Virginia Constitution bars such unequal treatment. See this story.

On October 23, Tunisia voted for a Constituent Assembly, which is expected to write a new constitution for the nation. See this blog post at Fruits and Votes to read the details. The Assembly has 217 seats and its members were elected from 33 districts, using the party list system of proportional representation.

Here is the New York Times story about the results. It appears that the dominant party will be Ennahda, which is considered moderate Islamist. However, Ennahda probably won’t gain an absolute majority, and will almost certainly form a coalition government with two smaller parties. Thanks to Bob Richard and Thomas Jones for the links.

Marilyn Marks, a Colorado activist who favors more public scrutiny of the vote-counting process, recently won a lawsuit in the Colorado Court of Appeals that voted ballots are public records and should be made available after the election for public scrutiny. Of course the decision said that this scrutiny could not violate a voter’s secret ballot, so of course, the scrutinized ballots cannot identify which voter cast them.

On October 20, Marks was then permitted to examine a few ballots. See this story. Marks was pleased and then wrote a letter to an Aspen newspaper, praising the Pitkin County Clerk. Marks hopes to examine more ballots in future elections. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link to the letter to the editor.