Findlaw.com has this neutral column, weighing the arguments on both sides on the issue of whether the names and addresses of people who sign petitions should be public information. The commentary is by Michael Dorf. See it here. The state of Washington’s brief, arguing in favor of making the information public, is due in the U.S. Supreme Court on December 7. The case is Doe v Reed, 09-559. The U.S. Supreme Court will probably decide whether to hear the case in early January 2010. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link.

Ever since 1956, the election returns book series called America Votes has been published after each presidential election and each midterm election. Congressional Quarterly, the publisher, has just released America Votes 28, which covers all federal elections, plus gubernatorial elections, occurring in 2008 and 2007. This volume has 532 pages. For the first time, this volume has a summary table of the leading minor party and independent presidential candidates that not only shows the vote for each in each state, but the percentage in each state.

Thus it is easy to see at a glance that in the 2008 presidential election, Ralph Nader’s highest percentage was in Maine; Bob Barr’s highest was Indiana; Chuck Baldwin’s was Utah; and Cynthia McKinney’s was Louisiana.

There are three authoritative publications that include election returns from each state, not only for President, but for Congress. After each election, there is a volume from the Federal Election Commission called Federal Elections (Year); there is a book from the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives called Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of (Date); and America Votes. But of these, only America Votes has the presidential vote from each county. America Votes also has all the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections by county as well. The author of America Votes 28 is Rhodes Cook.

On Friday, November 13, an Assistant Attorney General for Tennessee conducted depositions of the former or current state chairs of the Tennessee Libertarian, Constitution, and Green Parties, in that time order. Together the three depositions lasted over 7 hours. This is in the lawsuit that challenges the means by which new or previously unqualified parties get themselves on the ballot in Tennessee, called Libertarian Party of Tennessee et al v Thompson, 3:08-cv-63.

To a certain extent, of course, the state was trying to gather some sort of evidence that would show that any or all three of the plaintiff political parties are not substantial, or that they haven’t really tried to use the existing procedures. No petition for a new party in Tennessee has succeeded since George Wallace qualified the American Party in 1968. Even the Reform Party tried to qualify as a party in Tennessee, but never succeeded. Tennessee is the only state in which the Reform Party ever tried to qualify as a party and never succeeded. All minor party candidates who have appeared on the Tennessee ballot since 1973 have used the independent candidate petition procedure, which only requires 25 signatures (except that independent presidential candidates need 275 signatures).