On February 3, the West Virginia legislature passed HB 2853, which sets the details for the 2011 special gubernatorial election. The election will be October 4, 2011. The primary for the three ballot-qualified parties (Democratic, Republican, and Mountain) will be May 14. Nominees of unqualified parties, and independent candidates, need 1,766 signatures due by May 21. Anyone who wishes to avoid paying the filing fee needs a separate petition of 1,500 names.

West Virginia’s last gubernatorial election was in November 2008, when Joe Manchin, a Democrat, was elected. He resigned from the Governorship recently because he had been elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2010. That Senate election was also a special election, to fill the seat of Senator Robert Byrd, who died in office. Thanks to Jeff Becker for this news.

On February 2, the California Supreme Court refused to hear Keyes v Bowen, 188724, the case that argued the Secretary of State must investigate whether a presidential candidate meets the qualifications to be president, before listing him or her on the ballot. The case had been brought by Alan Keyes in 2008. UPDATE: Keyes plans to ask for U.S. Supreme Court review of this case.

The California Court of Appeals decision in this case will now stand. On October 25, 2010, the Court of Appeals had ruled that if a qualified party certifies a presidential nominee, the Secretary of State must list him or her on the November ballot. The decision says, “Section 6041 gives the Secretary of State some discretion in determining whether to place a name on the primary ballot, but she has no such discretion for the general election ballot…with respect to general elections, section 6901 directs that the Secretary of State must place on the ballot the names of the several political parties’ candidates.” The word “must” is in italics.

The Court of Appeals decision acknowledges that in 1968, California Secretary of State Frank Jordan refused to list the Peace & Freedom Party’s presidential nominee on the November ballot. That candidate was Eldridge Cleaver, and he was only 33 years old at the time. The decision, in effect, says the Secretary of State in 1968 should have listed Cleaver.

Scotusblog is a very prestigious blog that is recognized as the leading source of news about the U.S. Supreme Court. The editors choose particularly interesting and relevant cert petitions, and describe them, and provide links to the documents in that case. The case featured on February 3 is Green Party of Connecticut v Lenge, 10-795. See here. Thanks to both Thomas Jones and Rick Hasen for the link.

The case concerns Connecticut’s discriminatory law on how candidates for state office get public funding. All candidates must collect a large number of $5 contributions from voters, in order to qualify. But an independent candidate, or the candidate of a new party, must also submit a petition of 20% of the voters, in order to qualify for full public funding, whereas nominees of parties that polled 20% for Governor at the last election need no signatures at all.

The U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t accepted a case for review, if the cert petition was filed by a minor party or an independent candidate, since 1996, when it accepted Chandler v Miller, 520 U.S. 305, a Georgia case in which the Libertarian Party candidate for Lieutenant Governor successfully overturned a state law requiring candidates for state office to be tested for illegal drugs.