On June 28, Wisconsin Assemblymember John Nygren filed a lawsuit in state court, arguing that he should be on the ballot in one of the upcoming special elections for State Senate. He needed 400 valid signatures but elections officials said he only had 398 valid signatures. See this story.
On June 28, a Superior Court in Yavapai County, Arizona, ruled that Prescott Mayor Marlin Kuykendall should remain on the ballot in the August 2011 election. Kuykendall is running for re-election. See this story. His ballot position had been challenged because he did not sign his Statement of Campaign Organization form.
On the evening of June 27, Norman Ornstein, co-director of AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, debated Fred Smith, President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, on the subject of whether the United States should make voting compulsory. See this story. The debate was held in Washington, D.C., and was moderated by Mark Green, former Public Advocate for New York city. The debate was one in a series sponsored by Ralph Nader and the Center for the Study of Responsive Law.
The Washington Times has this interesting story about independent candidates in China, and ballot access. China does have some elections for local office but generally tries to keep all candidates off the ballot except those approved by the Communist Party.
On June 23, the Ninth Circuit determined that the lawsuit Washington State Republican Party v Washington State Grange will be heard by Judges Raymond C. Fisher, Dorothy Nelson, and Pamela Ann Rymer. Normally no U.S. Court of Appeals identifies which judges will hear a particular case this early in the process. However, the political parties had asked for the same three judges who had had this same case back in 2006. Washington state and the Washington State Grange, on the other side, did not oppose that idea.
Back on August 22, 2006, that panel had invalidated the Washington state top-two system. Then the case had gone to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in March 2008 that the system wasn’t necessarily unconstitutional on freedom of association grounds, and ruled that questoin could only be determined after the system had been used. That is why the case is still alive. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 had also declined to consider the ballot access and trademark issues, because the lower courts had not ruled on those two issues.
All three judges are southern Californians. Judge Nelson is a Carter appointee, Judge Rymer is a Bush Jr. appointee, and Judge Fisher is a Clinton appointee.
