On October 22, a US District Court in New York issued an injunction against the discriminatory law on fusion. The judge ordered the state to let Randy Credico appear on both lines: the Libertarian line and the Anti-Prohibition line. There will be an opinion soon.
November 2, 2010 ballots in New York city tell the voters to vote by marking “the oval above” the name of the preferred candidate. Actually, voters are supposed to fill in the oval below. The Board says it is not a problem because most voters don’t read the instructions anyway. See this story.
The Florida Senate Ethics and Elections Committee recently issued a report, suggesting new election laws for 2011. One of the ideas is to impose a prior affiliation requirement on independent candidates. No one could be an independent candidate if he or she had been a member of a qualified party during the previous 18 months before the election. This idea is prompted by hostility toward Governor Charlie Crist, who became an independent candidate earlier this year even while he was still a registered Republican.
On October 21, a lawsuit was filed in Florida state court in Miami to disqualify David Rivera, the Republican nominee for U.S. House, 25th district. The lawsuit, which apparently is called Barzee v Rivera, says that Rivera didn’t fill out his Florida state campaign finance statements properly in the past when he was a candidate for the Florida legislature. See this story.
On its face, this lawsuit seems destined to fail, because Rivera is running for Congress. Florida campaign laws cannot relate to candidates for Congress, and Florida law has no power to disqualify any candidate for Congress even if he or she did fail to abide by state campaign laws in the past.
On October 20, U.S. District Court Judge James A. Teilborg of Arizona granted an injunction, forbidding Coconino County election officials from interfering with one particular voter, or any voter, who wants to wear a Tea Party T-shirt to the polls on November 2, 2010. The voter who brought the lawsuit had been told she had to cover up her shirt, when she voted at the August 2010 primary and also when she voted at a local election in May. She sued on September 20. See this story. The case is Wickberg v Owens, cv10-8177-PHX.
Although the state law against electioneering at the polls stands, the judge construed the law to only include clothing that says something specific about a candidate or a ballot measure that is on the ballot at that election. There is no Tea Party listed on the Arizona ballot.
