On September 21, California filed this brief with the 9th circuit, in Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County v Bowen, 11-55316. The issue is the state law that says circulators for candidate petitions (for district office, such as U.S. House or state legislature) must live in the relevant district. The state concedes that the residency requirement for circulators is unconstitutional. But it says the lawsuit should be dismissed because the Secretary of State doesn’t enforce it. The petition form requires circulators to sign a statement at the bottom of the form “under penalty of perjury” that they do live in the district.

To establish that the Secretary of State doesn’t enforce the residency requirement for circulators, the state also asks the Court to take judicial notice of a 1980 ruling from a past Secretary of State, which says that signatures on a petition should count, even if the circulator isn’t a registered voter. But the 1980 ruling also says, “A circulator who completes a false affidavit is subject to criminal prosecution for perjury or, where applicable, violating Elections Code 29780, and suspected violators should be reported by local elections officials to the proper authorities.” Here is the state’s request that the court take judicial notice of the 1980 ruling, which includes a link to that 1980 ruling. It also includes a link to a January 2010 statement by the current Secretary of State that she still adheres to the 1980 ruling.

On September 21, U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates, a Bush Jr. appointee, upheld the parts of the federal Voting Rights Act that require certain states to pre-clear election law changes with the Voting Rights Section of the U.S. Justice Department. The case is Shelby County, Alabama v Holder, D.C., 1:10cv-651. Here is the decision.

The Alabama case is one of several constitutional challenges to this part of the Voting Rights Act. A few months ago, another U.S. District Court had in Washington, D.C., had also upheld this part of the act, in a case filed by some North Carolina voters. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news and for the link to the decision, which is 151 pages long. UPDATE: a third case challenging the pre-clearance parts of the Voting Rights Act, State of Arizona v Holder, happens to be before Judge Bates, so that increases the odds that the Arizona challenge will also lose. See this story.

The California Secretary of State has placed this chart on her web page. It shows how many signatures Americans Elect submitted on its petition to be a party, by county. If a particular county has already checked signatures (using a random sample), the chart shows the results. So far, the validity is at 76.8%, which shows that the petition is very likely to succeed. The chart will be updated daily. Not all counties have reported the number of signatures submitted, so as of today, the chart cannot be used to know how many signatures were submitted in the entire state. Americans Elect says it submitted 1,630,000 signatures to meet a requirement of 1,030,040.