A federal law requires the Governor of each state, and the Mayor of Washington, D.C., to file a certificate of ascertainment with the U.S. Archives, after each presidential election. The law, section 6 of Title 3 of the U.S. Code, requires that this certificate contain the name of each candidate for presidential elector, and how many popular votes he or she received.

Here is page two of the Certificate of Ascertainment filed by the Mayor of Washington, D.C., after the 2008 presidential election. In violation of the law, it fails to list three legally-qualified candidates for presidential elector. They were J. Bradley Jansen, Rob Kampia, and Stacie Rumenap. They had filed as official write-in candidates for presidential elector, pledged to vote for Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr if they were elected to the electoral college. The District of Columbia Board of Elections accepted their filing. But, the District’s certification fails to list them.

The District failed to list them, because if it had listed them, it would have been obliged to say how many votes they received. Since the Board of Elections never counted their votes, the certificate conveniently pretends that they were not legally-qualified candidates, and fails to mention them. The federal law says the certificate shall contain “the number of votes given or cast for each person” running for presidential elector.

On March 10, the ACLU of Maine filed a lawsuit on behalf of Dennis Bailey, who was recently fined by the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices for creating an anonymous blog about Eliot Cutler. Cutler was a leading independent candidate for Governor of Maine last year. He placed second, ahead of the Democratic nominee, and came close to winning. Here is the complaint, which is called Bailey v State of Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices. It is filed in state Superior Court in Cumberland County.

Maine campaign finance laws require that a person who makes an “expenditure” advocating the election or defeat of a candidate must state his or her name and address. The law exempts newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media. Bailey spent $92 on his blog, and didn’t identify himself on his blog, so he was fined. The lawsuit argues that the law is unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1995 in McIntyre v Ohio Elections Commission that the First Amendment protects the distribution of campaign literature that does not include the name and address of the person who writes and distributes that literature. Thanks to Alex Hammer for this news.