On March 9, 2010, U.S. District Court Judge John C. Coughenour issued a 10-page procedural order, generally letting the Washington Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian Parties amend their complaints, in the ongoing case against the “top-two” system that Washington has been using since 2008. Judge Coughenour did delete one part of the Republican Party’s complaint, which deals with whether top-two violates the state Constitution.

The order says, “Many of the new paragraphs at least obliquely bolster a claim for voter confusion – the substance of the as-applied challenge currently before the Court.”

Also important is footnote 2, which says that even though this Judge had ruled against the Libertarian Party’s ballot access and trademark arguments in his order of August 20, 2009, that “because of the parties’ continued ability to appeal those claims at least once, the Court would not under any circumstances require deletion of those claims from pleadings.”

On March 10, the Virginia House tabled SB 624 until 2011. This is the bill on who can see the list of which voters voted in the most recent election. This probably means that the Know Campaign will reactivate its lawsuit in state court to obtain the list. The Know Campaign is a non-partisan group that encourages higher voter turnout by the device of mailing postal letters to voters to let them know which of their neighbors voted in the last election. The idea is that if people know their neighbors will find out if they voted, they will be more likely to vote. Existing state law gives the list of which voters voted to candidates, parties, and PAC’s, but not to other groups.

SB 624 had been introduced to clarify that groups like the Know Campaign may also see the list. Then the bill had been amended to say that no one may see the list. But, that idea doesn’t seem acceptable to the legislators either.

On March 11, Ross Mirkarimi told the press that he has changed his voter registration from “Green” to “Democratic”. See this story from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Mirkarimi had been the Green Party’s only county supervisor in California, although the party still has some California city councilmembers, and has Mayor of Richmond, California, is a registered Green. Thanks to Irv Sutley for this news.