Jack Davis, a former Democratic candidate for the U.S. House in New York, is running in the May 24 special election to fill the vacant U.S. House seat, 26th district. He has just filed an independent candidate petition, with the party label “Tea Party.” He submitted over 12,000 signatures to meet the requirement of 3,500 signatures. New York ballots contain a party logo for each party. The Davis logo is the Liberty Bell, which was also the old logo of the Liberal Party when it was on the ballot 1944 through 2002.

His campaign web page is http://jackdavis.org. He is a wealthy person who won the U.S. Supreme Court case Davis v F.E.C., which struck down the “millionaires’ amendment”. The law that was declared unconstitutional in that case said that when any candidate for Congress spends at least $350,000 of his or her own money, then the ceiling on how much money can be contributed to the opponents in the race is substantially relaxed.

The Indiana legislature is unable to pass bills this session, because all the Democrats in the House have boycotted the session for the last month. A similar Democratic boycott in Wisconsin got much more national publicity, and is now over. See this story about the Indiana legislature. The deadline for bills to have passed their house of origin has passed. If the Democrats come back, though, that deadline might be altered.

Election law bills that are technically dead this year include a bill to require birth certificates for presidential candidates, a bill to eliminate the straight-ticket device, and a bill to provide that the open primary should become a secret open primary (currently, any voter can choose any party’s primary ballot, but the voter on primary day must publicly disclose which ballot he or she is requesting; the bill would make that decision private).

On March 21, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Cao v Federal Election Commission, 10-776, a case filed by the national Republican Party and by former Congressman Joseph Cao of New Orleans, concerning federal campaign finance law. The party had argued that the part of the McCain-Feingold law that inhibits political party spending on its own nominees, as interpreted by the Federal Election Commission, is too strict. The lower courts had rejected the party’s arguments, mostly on the grounds that the U.S. Supreme Court had already upheld these rules. Many observers had expected the U.S. Supreme Court to hear this case.