KATU of Portland, Oregon, has this story about Americans Elect. The film clip shows a petitioner asking passersby to sign the petition to get Americans Elect on the ballot.
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A U.S. District Court in Virginia will hold an oral argument in Lux v Judd on January 17, 2012. This is the case on Virginia’s law that forbids anyone from circulating a petition to get an independent candidate for U.S. House on the ballot, unless the circulator lives in that district. The Fourth Circuit already made it very difficult for the state to win this case, by ruling on July 6, 2011, that the law can’t be justified on the grounds that the requirement is needed to show that the candidate has support within that district. But the Fourth Circuit had sent the case back to the U.S. District Court to see if the state wants to make any new argument.
On September 21, Judge Pamela Ann Rymer of southern California died at the age of 69. Here is the 9th circuit press release. She had been fighting cancer, but had sat on an oral arguments panel as recently as July 2011, and had authored her last opinion last month. She had been scheduled to be on the panel in Washington State Grange v Washington State Republican Party, the case against the Washington state top-two system. Normally the identity of appeals judges is not known that far in advance of an oral argument. But in this case, the 9th circuit had agreed that the same panel that struck down the Washington state top-two system in 2006 should hear the case again. The other two judges on the panel are also southern Californians: Judge Raymond C. Fisher and Judge Dorothy Nelson. Thanks to How Appealing for the news about Judge Rymer.
On September 21, U.S. District Court Judge Dan A. Polster, a Clinton appointee, declined to put Tim Quinn on the ballot for Mayor of Elyria, Ohio, as an independent candidate. The case is Quinn v Lorain County Board of Elections, n.d., 1:11-cv-1968. There is no written opinion. Quinn submitted enough valid signatures, but he was kept off the ballot because he had voted in the Democratic primary.
Ohio election law does not say that independent candidates must not have voted in a partisan primary. It just says they must not have run in a partisan primary.
On September 22, three judges of the Third Circuit issued a new opinion in Carl Lewis’s ballot access lawsuit. The new opinion upholds the decision of the U.S. District Court, and the Secretary of State, that he should not be on the ballot. This is a reversal of what the same panel did last week. Here is the 10-page decision. The case is Lewis v Guadagno, 11-3401. The new ruling does not mention that the same panel had issued a contrary ruling last week.
The new opinion relies on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Clements v Fashing, issued in 1982, saying that the right to be a candidate is not a fundamental right. The new opinion upholds the constitutionality of New Jersey’s Constitution, which requires a candidate for State Senate to have lived in the state for the four years preceding the election. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.