On the afternoon of June 21, eleven judges of the 9th circuit will rehear the case over whether Arizona is violating law by requiring voter registration applications to include proof of the new voter’s citizenship. The hearing is in Pasadena, California. See this story. An original panel of the 9th circuit last year had struck down the law on the grounds that the federal moter-voter law precludes states from requiring additional documents to be attached to voter registration applications. The original panel’s vote had been 2-1 and had included retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The federal government has intervened in the case on the side of the voters who had challenged the law.

Canada’s New Democratic Party convention has deferred the decision of whether to drop “socialist” from the party’s Constitution. The executive committee of the party will decide this later. See this story. The New Democratic Party now has the 2nd largest number of seats in Canada’s Parliament.

On June 10, Ohio Secretary of State John Husted issued a directive to Ohio county election boards. The directive forbids them from checking petition validity before the entire petition has been submitted. This is unfortunate, because Ohio petition validity in invariably very low, for initiative proponents, new parties, and candidates alike. Many states will check petitions on a flow basis, so that petitioning groups know how well they are doing, and need not be in such suspense.

Some Ohio county election boards had been doing these kinds of checks, but they were unofficial. The directive says if the practice continues, the official validity checks might be different than the unofficial checks. But there is an easy solution for that problem; just tell petitioning groups that the preliminary check isn’t necessarily final. The information would still be useful. Thanks to Anthony Davis for the link.