On September 10, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema heard arguments in Libertarian Party of Virginia v Virginia State Board of Elections, 1:10-cv-615, eastern district. The issue is whether Virginia may require all petition circulators for U.S. House candidates to be residents of the district. In this case, the petitioner is the candidate himself, Matt Mosley. He doesn’t live in the 8th district, but that is the district he is running in. The U.S. Constitution does not require candidates for U.S. House to live in the district they are seeking to represent.
A similar Virginia case, before another judge, already lost in U.S. District Court in a different division of the eastern district. That case is Lux v Rodrigues. That case also involves a candidate who circulated his own petition, and in which all those signatures were disqualified because the candidate, Herb Lux, doesn’t live in the district he hopes to represent. That case is already before the 4th circuit, Lux v Rodrigues, 10-1997. On September 15, the 4th circuit refused to order the State Board of Elections to check the Lux petition to see if it was actually signed by as many as 1,000 registered voters (the legal requirement for U.S. House candidates in Virginia is 1,000 signatures). The 4th circuit order is not signed by any particular judge and has no text explaining the basis for the denial.
