On April 12, the 9th circuit will hear oral arguments in McComish v Bennett, 10-15165. This is the case on whether the Arizona public funding program for candidates for state office can be used this year.

The panel will be Judges A. Wallace Tashima and Sidney Thomas (both Clinton appointees) and Judge Andrew Kleinfeld (a Bush Sr. appointee). The hearing will be in San Francisco.

The U.S. District Court had said that the parts of the public funding program that give extra public funds to privately-funded candidates who have raised considerable money are unconstitutional. And, the U.S. District Court said the unconstitutional part can’t be separated out from the other part, so the program can’t be used this year.

On April 3, officers of the state Alabama Republican Party voted to prevent State Senator Harri Anne Smith from placing her name on the June 1 primary ballot. She wants to run for re-election to the State Senate, 29th district, in southeast Alabama.

The party said she was denied the right to file because in 2008 she endorsed a Democrat, Bobby Bright, for U.S. House. Alabama law gives parties the ability to bar “disloyal” members from running in party primaries.

Smith says she may run for re-election as an independent. If she does, she will need approximately 1,100 valid signatures by June 1. She was elected as a Republican to the State Senate in 1998, 2002, and 2006. In the 2002 general election, she was unopposed. In the 2006 general election, she received 26,507 votes and her Democratic opponent received 8,710. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.

On April 3, the North Dakota Libertarian Party state convention endorsed eight candidates, each of whom will run unopposed in the party’s primary on June 8, assuming the state approves the party’s ballot access petition. North Dakota requires 7,000 signatures to recognize a new party, and the party is in the process of turning in 8,400 raw signatures. North Dakota does not have voter registration, so there is no list of registered voters to check the petition against. The Secretary of State, when presented with a petition, randomly samples some names from the petition and sends a piece of postal mail. If the post office doesn’t return more than a handful as undeliverable, the petition is approved.

The Libertarian Party is the first party in North Dakota history to submit a party petition in a midterm year. The party petition procedure has only existed since 1939. It required 15,000 signatures until 1980, when the 8th circuit ruled that the number was too high. In 1981 the legislature lowered it to 7,000.

If the party’s candidate for Secretary of State this year polls 5%, the party’s ballot status will be extended into 2012. The party has candidates for six statewide offices, one for State House, and one for Sheriff of Grand Forks County.

North Dakota is the only state that says that a candidate is not necessarily deemed nominated in a party’s primary, just because the candidate outpolls all his or her opponents in that primary. Additionally, a candidate must poll a minimum number of votes in the primary. Any statewide candidate who does not get at least 300 votes in the primary will not be allowed to be on the November ballot. Legislative and county candidates face an even more severe primary ballot hurdle. The candidate for the legislature, Anthony Stewart in the 17th district, will need 131 primary votes. While that sounds low, there were only approximately 1,250 voters who voted in the primary in that district in 2006. For Stewart to persuade over 10% of all the primary voters to abstain from voting in the Democratic and Republican primaries, and instead choose a Libertarian primary ballot, will be very difficult. A somewhat similar Minnesota law, requiring candidates in a party primary to poll a minimum number of votes, was declared unconstitutional in 2004 by the Minnesota Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision called Candidacy of Independence Party Candidates v Kiffmeyer, 688 NW 2d 854.