On February 28, the U.S. Supreme Court released an orders list, showing which cases it decided to hear, or not to hear, at its February 24 conference. For the second week in a row, the Court has not yet decided whether to hear Burris v Judge, and/or Quinn v Judge, numbers 10-367 and 10-821. These are the cases over the special U.S. Senate election in Illinois last year. The case has been re-listed for the March 4 conference.

The 7th circuit had ordered Illinois to hold a special election for the Class III U.S. Senate seat, on November 2, 2010. This is the U.S. Senate seat that President Obama had been elected to in 2004. When he resigned from the Senate to become President, the Governor of Illinois had appointed Roland Burris to fill the seat. Some Illinois voters had sued to force the state to hold a special election. The 7th circuit had ruled in favor of a special election, to be held in November 2010, with the winner to take office immediately. But the 7th circuit also refused to let Senator Burris run for the seat he was holding. Instead it ordered that only the candidates who were already on the November 2010 election for the full 6-year term could run in the special election. The Governor of Illinois then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the 7th circuit had been wrong to order a special election. Also Senator Burris had appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that if the special election was to be held, the 7th circuit had been wrong to dictate which candidates could run.

Two Massachusetts representatives, James Dwyer (D-Woburn) and Bradley Jones (R-North Reading) have introduced HB 1972, to move the presidential primary from February to June. The bill also moves the primary for other office from September to June. The state would save money by holding only one primary instead of two.

The bill, if enacted, would not affect the deadline for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, to get on the ballot. That deadline would remain in July.

The idea of a Massachusetts presidential primary that late in the year is completely new to that state. Massachusetts has held a presidential primary in every presidential election year starting in 1912, and it has always been in February, March, or April. Thanks to Josh Putnam of Frontloading HQ for this news.

On February 4, IndependentVoting.org filed a request with a U.S. District Court in South Carolina, asking that it be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit called Greenville County Republican Party Executive Committee, and South Carolina Republican Party, et al., v State of South Carolina, 6:10-cv-01407. Here is IndependentVoting’s memorandum. Here is IndependentVoting’s Motion, which includes affidavits by Jacqueline Salit, president of IndependentVoting, and Wayne Griffin, chair of the ballot-qualified Independence Party of South Carolina.

The Motion also includes unsigned statements by a South Carolina Democratic legislator, Joe Neal; by Allen Olson, chair of the Columbia Tea Party; by Brett Bursey, who was the Labor Party’s nominee for state house last year; and by Ted Adams, chair of the Constitution Party of South Carolina.

The lawsuit was filed last year by the Greenville County Republican Party and the South Carolina Republican Party. It argues that since parties in South Carolina must pay for their own primaries for municipal office (in cities that have partisan elections), the parties ought to be able to limit voting in those primaries to voters who are not “rivals” of the party. The Republicans also attack a state law that says that if a party convention chooses to nominate by convention, the motion must pass with a 3/4ths vote. South Carolina is one of the few states that lets all parties decide for themselves whether to nominate by primary or by convention, but the 3/4ths law makes it difficult for the major parties to ever opt out of a primary. The papers filed by IndependentVoting do not discuss the point that parties pay for their own municipal primaries. Also, IndependentVoting does not discuss the state law requiring a 3/4ths vote for a party to choose to nominate by convention. Thanks to Harry Kresky for copies of IndependentVoting’s legal papers. All of the state legislators mentioned as supporting IndependentVoting’s intervention are Democrats. Here is a Greenville News editorial opposing the lawsuit, although the editorial does not mention IndependentVoting’s request to intervene.

Here is the Republican Party’s complaint, filed last year.