As noted earlier, on September 14, Tom Tancredo won his ballot access lawsuit, and will be on the November 2010 ballot as the Constitution Party’s nominee for Governor of Colorado.  Here is the 9-page decision.  The decision has a surprising twist.  It seems to conclude that Tancredo could not have been nominated at the Constitution Party’s state convention earlier this year, because he had been a registered Republican too close to the date of that convention.  But, Tancredo wasn’t nominated at the party’s convention.  The original nominee for Governor had resigned from the ticket and the party state committee had then replaced the original nominee with Tancredo, a process that has fewer restrictions on who can be chosen.

The decision says nothing about whether the plaintiffs (the people who tried to remove Tancredo from the ballot) filed their lawsuit too late.  Thanks to John Duffy for the link to the opinion.

On September 1, the national Voting Rights office of the American Civil Liberties Union asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Cottier v City of Martin, South Dakota, 10-335.  The original 3-judge panel in the 8th circuit had ruled that the city could use cumulative voting for its city council elections, or single-member districts, but it could not continue to use at-large elections.  Martin is a very small town with a substantial minority of American Indians.  They are dispersed throughout the city so that it isn’t practical to draw single-member districts that would make them a majority in any single district.  The city had then appealed to the full 8th circuit, and the 8th circuit had then reversed the original 3-judge panel and said the city should continue to use the same old system it has always used.

On September 14, a hearing was held in San Francisco Superior Court in Field v Bowen, the case that attacks two aspects of California’s “top-two” system that are more restrictive than Washington state’s version.  Even though the authors of California’s Proposition 14, and its implementing language, say they based their proposal on Washington state’s “top-two” system, in reality the California version gives voters and candidates less freedom.

Washington permits write-ins in both the primary and the general election, but the authors of Proposition 14 oppose write-in votes in November for Congress and state office.  Washington permits a candidate to choose any party preference, but California’s version does not let voters who are registered into an unqualified party list that party name on the ballot.  Washington has easy ballot access for minor party and general election presidential candidates, but California does not, and Proposition 14 makes the rules for presidential ballot access far more severe.

At the hearing, both the attorney for the Secretary of State, and the attorney for the supporters of Proposition 14, severely criticized the Washington state version of “top-two”.  Mark Beckington, for the Secretary of State, said that unless a party is a qualified party, it is not a political party.  He said that to let a member of an unqualified political party put his or her party name on the ballot would “confuse” voters.  Marguerite Leone, for the groups that support Proposition 14, was more emotional.  She said, with genuine alarm in her voice, “What if someone wants to put ‘Republic Party’ or ‘GOP Party’?  Of course, that is exactly what does happen in Washington state.  As to write-ins, she said that just because Washington state permits them is no reason for California to permit them.

The attorneys in favor of Proposition 14’s implementing legislation were somewhat uncomfortable asserting that the California legislature intended to eliminate write-in space on ballots, because the existing election law says that write-in space should be printed on ballots.  Existing law also says that all voters may cast a write-in in “any” election.  And existing election law says anyone may file in any federal or state election as a declared write-in candidate.  Beckington said that the Secretary of State has proposed “corrective legislation.”  The judge then said she would not change her tentative decision, which says that the legislature’s intent was to abolish write-in space on ballots.  In other words, the case was decided on imaginary laws that may or may not come into existence in the future, instead of actual laws currently on the books.

The attorney for the Secretary of State also said that the special election in the First State Senate district, set for January 4, 2011, would be held under the rules in effect before Proposition 14 passed.  It is not a certainty that there will be such a special election on January 4, but it is extremely likely.