On August 31, the Arizona Supreme Court agreed to hear the case over the validity of petitions to recall State Senate President Russell Pearce. See this story. The lower court had agreed that the petition is valid. If the State Supreme Court agrees with the lower court, Arizona will then hold its first recall for a state legislator. Senator Pearce does not contest the point that the recall petition was signed by a sufficient number of registered voters, but his lawsuit focuses on technical deficiencies concerning the petition.

The Arizona Supreme Court still hasn’t decided whether to hear another election law case, the one over whether the state has the authority to tell Tucson that the city must use non-partisan elections. In the State Supreme Court, that case is State of Arizona v City of Tucson, cv11-0150-pr.

Robert Robb, columnist for the Arizona Republic, the daily newspaper of Phoenix, writes here that Arizona has a good chance of winning its recently filed lawsuit against part of the federal Voting Rights Act. The case, filed last week, is State of Arizona v Holder, U.S. District Court, Washington D.C., 11-1559. It has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee. It argues that the pre-clearance parts of the Act are unconstitutional. The law has been upheld many times in the past, but past precedents may no longer control, as the column explains.

Howard Wilson, a long-time Libertarian Party activist in New Hampshire, has this op-ed in the Monitor, the daily newspaper of Concord, New Hampshire. Wilson points out that some of the Republican Party officials who are criticizing the state chair of the Republican Party for signing a Libertarian Party ballot access petition, themselves signed petitions to put Libertarians on the 2010 ballot. The op-ed is also interesting for its details about petitioning in New Hampshire.

In New Hampshire, only a single petition is permitted on any particular petition sheet. This explains what is meant when Wilson says the petition was returned to the Republican Party state chair. It is a way for him to have withdrawn his signature.