On November 20, California elections officials announced that the petition to recall Assemblymember Anthony Adams does not have enough valid signatures. The petition needed 35,825 valid signatures (12% of the vote cast in the district for Governor in 2006). Although recall proponents submitted 58,384, a random sample shows that only 24,579 signatures are valid, a validity rate of only 42.1%.

The recall effort was launched by a group that was angry at Adams for voting for certain tax increases earlier this year. Adams is a Republican representing the 59th district, which is mostly in San Bernardino County, and partly in Los Angeles County.

On November 13, a South Dakota Circuit Court Judge ruled that petition signatures are valid if the signer is not on the list of active registered voters, but is on the list of inactive voters. Inactive voters are those who once registered to vote, but whose registration is considered questionable because the post office reported that the voter had moved and that voter has not re-registered. The judge, Kathleen Trandahl, also ruled that petition sheets are valid even if the notary public who notarized that sheet makes errors in his or her notarization statement, such as putting an incorrect date on when the notary’s seal expires. The case is Trucano v Nelson, 32-cv-09-306. See this story.

It is possible the state will appeal. UPDATE: on November 20, the state decided not to appeal. The case arose because the state had rejected a referendum petition. The 2009 session of the legislature had passed a bill to ban smoking in bars and casinos. Opponents of that new law had then submitted a petition to call for a public vote, which will be held in November 2010.

Briefs are being filed in the Indiana Supreme Court in the case League of Women Voters v Rokita, over whether the Indiana law requiring voters to show government photo-ID at the polls violates the Indiana Constitution. On September 17, the Indiana State Court of Appeals had invalidated the law, so now the Indiana Supreme Court will have the last word.

Amicus curiae briefs against the law have been filed by the ACLU, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the national League of Women Voters, the American Association of Retired Persons, and the National Senior Citizens Law Center. Also, six political science professors have filed a brief against the law, and another brief was filed by two history professors and a law professor. The role of the history professors is to shed light on the intent of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention that wrote Indiana’s Constitution.

No amicus brief was filed in support of the law. All these briefs may be read at the Moritz Law web page, at this link.