U.S. District Court Judge James Mahan, a Bush Jr. appointee, holds a hearing on June 30, at 11 a.m., in Angle v Miller, 2:09-cv-1969.  The case challenges a Nevada law that says initiative circulators must sign a statement that all the signers are registered voters.  The lawsuit complains that the circulators can’t know that information, and it is intimidating to force them to sign a statement that isn’t true.

The case also challenges the distribution requirement for initiatives.  Proponents must collect a substantial number of signatures in each of the three U.S. House districts.  That part of the lawsuit will be difficult to win.  No court has ever invalidated a distribution requirement for statewide petitions that is based on U.S. House districts, because U.S. House districts have equal populations, at least at the beginning of any decade.  Finally, the lawsuit challenges Nevada’s extremely strict single-subject rule.  See this story.  The plaintiff in this case is Sharron Angle, who was not particularly famous in 2009 when she filed the case.  She is this year’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

The Arkansas Secretary of State has checked the Green Party’s ballot access petition and found it sufficient.  The party needed 10,000 valid signatures and submitted 14,207.  The Secretary of State says there are 11,505 valid signatures, for a validity rate of 81.0%.

This is the third election year in a row that the Green Party has successfully completed this petition.  The only other party that ever completed it was the Reform Party, in 1996.

Arkansas did not require any petition for a party to appear on the ballot until 1971.  Parties merely had to hold a nominating convention and certify the names of the nominees to the Secretary of State, before 1971.

The Arkansas Green Party is currently in court, not against the 10,000 signature petition, but against the state law that says a party should lose its qualified status after a presidential election if it doesn’t poll as much as 3% of the vote for President.

On June 29, independent gubernatorial candidate Alex Hammer sued the Maine Secretary of State in state court.  The Secretary of State had told town clerks not to validate signatures on petition sheets unless those sheets had been physically taken to that town clerk.  The candidate had scanned his petition sheets at high resolution and e-mailed them to various town clerks, to save time and transportation costs.  The case is Hammer v Maine Secretary of State, Penobscot County Superior Court, AP-10-15.  UPDATE:  here is a newspaper story about the case.