On October 8, the Inititive & Referendum Institute filed a notice of appeal in its case against the postal service, over whether petitioning can be carried out on interior postal sidewalks.  The case was filed in 2000 and it took the U.S. District Court ten years to rule against petitioning.  Now the case goes to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.

On October 7, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in Paquin v Mack, A10-1177, that petition signatures are invalid if the signer listed a post office box address instead of a street address.  Here is the 13-page opinion.  The result confirms that an independent candidate for the state legislature, Gregory Wayne Paquin, will not appear on the ballot.  His ballot label would have been “Minnesota Warriors for Justice Party.”

The opinion does not mention a contrary opinion from the Arizona Supreme Court in 2008, Jenkins v Hale, 190 P.3d 175.  The Arizona Supreme Court had said, “We find it difficult to see how a post office box address renders a signature invalid per se if an elections official can verify that the signer is a qualified elector.  In some instances, the election official may even have the post office box address on file.”  Both this Minnesota case, and the Arizona case, involved petitions circulated on Indian reservations.  Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.

UPDATE:  also on October 7, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled against another candidate for the state legislature, who had challenged disqualification of her petition also on the basis that post office box addresses ought to be acceptable.  In that decision, Beaulieu v Mack, A10-1389, the Minnesota Supreme Court did mention the Arizona precedent.  But the Minnesota Supreme Court said the Arizona law is different than Minnesota’s law, because in Arizona, the circulator affirms that each signature he or she gathered is valid.