Nevada AB 81 has been amended to provide that petitions for a new party must be completed by April of an election year. Current law requires these petitions to be completed by May. AB 81 is one of the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bills. It has passed the Assembly and the Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee, and will probably receive a vote in the Senate in two days.

In 1986 a U.S. District Court struck down Nevada’s old April petition deadline for new parties. That case was Libertarian Party of Nevada v Swackhamer, 638 F.Supp. 565. At the time, Nevada required newly-qualifying parties to nominate by primary. Ever since 1987, Nevada has provided that newly-qualifying parties nominate by convention, so moving the petition deadline back to April is supremely irrational. The bill says the deadline to turn the signatures in to the Secretary of State will be in May. However, another law, not being amended by AB 81, says that the true deadine is 25 working days before deadline for the Secretary of State to receive the signatures, so the effective deadline imposed by the bill is April. Thanks to Janine Hansen for this news.

On May 23, briefs were filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in Chamness v Bowen, the case that challenges two particular aspects of California’s top-two election system (the ban on counting write-ins, and the discriminatory policy that lets some candidates show a party label, but not others). Here is the state’s brief. Here is the brief of former Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, who has intervened in the case.

The state’s brief is interesting because it includes a copy of the sample ballot from the May 17 special U.S. House election in the 36th district. The intervenor’s brief is interesting because of its scornful, hostile tone. It says the rights at stake are “trivial” and “minor”. It opens by misquoting Albert Einstein, implying that the plaintiffs are “insane” for trying to win this case on summary judgment even though they did not succeed in getting injunctive relief earlier. They suggest that the attorney for the plaintiffs should be sanctioned because he didn’t discuss Burdick v Takushi in his brief. The intervenors also cite a case from Iowa in which the 8th circuit upheld Iowa’s failure to let people register as members of unqualified parties on voter registration cards, but they do not mention five other cases in which courts held that states must let voters register into unqualified parties.

This newspaper story describes the advantages of electronic poll books and scanners at the polling place. Sioux Falls, South Dakota’s School District will soon hold an election in which a voter within the district can vote at any of the ten voting locations, rather than just one particular location. Officials at that voting location scan the voter’s driver’s license or state ID card. Also, the voter signs in with an electronic signature. This system prevents anyone from voting with the same ID card more than once.