The U.S. Supreme Court releases advance information to the public about which cases it has on conference, for any particular conference date. The purpose of the conference is to decide whether to hear various cases. There are now three election law cases which have been through at least one conference, but the Court has neither accepted them nor rejected them, nor even set a new conference date for them.

The case over the special U.S. Senate election in Illinois has been through three conferences, the last of which was March 4. There is still no action by the Court on this case (which is really two cases, Burris v Judge and Quinn v Judge), and the Court hasn’t even set a new conference date.

The case over Dallas vote-counting machines and the Voting Rights Act had a conference on March 18, with no result and no new conference date announced.

Most recently, the Green Party of Connecticut case over discriminatory public funding had a conference on March 25, with no result and no new conference date. Of the three cases, the Connecticut case absense of action is the least puzzling. Another case involving public funding (from Arizona) will get a decision on the merits in the next two or three months, so it is plausible that the Court is holding the Connecticut case for further action when the Arizona decision comes down. But it is difficult to understand why the court has put action on the Illinois special election case, and the Texas vote-counting machine case, into the indefinite future.

On March 28, the Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee introduced SB 1198. Currently, Idaho voter registration forms do not ask voters to choose a party. The bill provides that in the future, voter registration forms will include a place for voters to choose a party, or to choose “unaffiliated” status. The bill also says that sign-in sheets at the May 2012 primary will include a party membership checkbox. Starting in 2012, each qualified party would determine for itself whether or not to let independent voters vote in its primary.

Voters who don’t fill out a new voter registration form in the next two years, and who don’t vote in the 2012 primary, would automatically become independent voters. Voters who choose a Republican ballot in the May 2012 primary would be automatically listed as Republicans, and the same is true for the Democratic, Constitution, and Libertarian Parties. The bill does not provide for a blank line on the voter registration form for anyone to write-in the name of an unqualified party. That aspect of the bill may be unconstitutional; courts in five states have said that voters must be allowed to register into active unqualified parties. Also, the failure of the bill to provide for a blank line for a voter to write-in the name of a newly-qualifying party would mean that if a new party qualifies in Idaho, all the voter registration forms would need to be immediately reprinted.

If the bill passes, it is not out of the question that Idaho voters who are not happy with this system will create a new party, perhaps named the Moderate Party. Rhode Island already has a ballot-qualified party named the Moderate Party, and Alaska once had a ballot-qualified Republican Moderate Party.

On March 28, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in McComish v Bennett, and Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s PAC v Bennett, the two combined cases over one aspect of Arizona public funding for candidates for state office. This Associated Press story, although skimpy, seems to suggest that there are five votes to strike down the part of the law that provides for extra public funding for publicly-financed candidates who have well-financed opponents who are not using public funding.

Here is the transcript of the argument. Thanks to the Institute for Justice for the link.