On June 1, the South Carolina Republican Party sued the South Carolina State Election Commission to obtain a closed primary for itself. South Carolina has never had registration by party, and has always had open primaries. Here is the party’s complaint. The case is Greenville County Republican Party v State of South Carolina and Hudgens, 6:10-cv-1407-HFF. It was assigned to Judge Henry F. Floyd, a Bush Jr. appointee.

The party argues that because South Carolina parties must pay for their own primaries for municipal office, at least parties should be able to limit their municipal primaries to persons who identify themselves as party members.

The weakness in the lawsuit, as applied to primaries for federal, state and county office, is that South Carolina permits parties to nominate by convention if they choose. The party’s complaint acknowledges that, so the complaint also attacks a state law that says if a party decides to hold a convention, it may only do so if three-fourths of the delegates to the convention vote in favor of nomination by convention. That part of the complaint seems strong, given the U.S. Supreme Court precedents that say parties have a right to make such decisions for themselves. But if the Court knocked out the three-fourths rule, that would weaken the part of the lawsuit that attempts to get a closed primary.

On June 7, the National Popular Vote Plan made a big leap forward. The New York State Senate passed it by a vote of 51-7. A majority of Republicans voted for it, as well as a majority of Democrats. Generally in other states Republican state legislators have tended to vote against it.

The bill in New York is S2286. It had been introduced on February 17, 2009, and had passed the Senate Elections Committee on February 8, 2010. Thank to Barry Fadem for this news.

On June 7, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear two ballot access cases, one from Alabama and one from Louisiana. The Alabama case, Shugart v Chapman, 09-1221, challenged the number of signatures needed to put an independent candidate for U.S. House on the ballot, given that the state required more signatures for him than for an independent presidential candidate.

The Louisiana case involved whether Bob Barr should have been on the ballot in Louisiana. The Governor of Louisiana had set a later deadline, which Barr met, but the Secretary of State had set an earlier deadline than the Governor’s deadline, which Barr did not meet. The changes in deadlines were because of hurricanes. That case was called Libertarian Party v Dardenne, 09-1223.

The U.S. Supreme Court also refused to hear Rodearmel v Clinton, 09-797, which is not an election law case. It concerned whether Article I of the U.S. Constitution was violated when Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State. Article I, section 6, says no member of Congress is eligible to an appointed position if that person had been in Congress when the salary of that position had been raised. Congress had raised the salary of Secretary of State while Clinton had been a U.S. Senator. But when Clinton was appointed, Congress had lowered the salary back to what it had been before that raise.