The Illinois 8th U.S. House district is one of the more closely balanced congressional districts in the nation. In 2004 it switched from the Republicans to the Democrats, when Melissa Bean defeated long-time incumbent Philip Crane. Bean has been re-elected ever since. In 2006, Bill Scheurer formed the Moderate Party and eventually qualified as that party’s candidate for the 8th district after a long legal struggle. See this account from 2006, in which he sued the Democratic Party after the evidence showed that Democrats had tricked him into hiring a paid petitioning company that was secretly planning to sabotage his petition campaign.

For 2010, Scheurer has been planning to run again as a Green Party nominee. However, a challenge has now been filed against his petition to obtain a place on the Green Party primary ballot. Green Party activists support his candidacy, and he is the only Green attempting to run in that district. See this story.

Arizona’s public funding law for candidates for state office provides that a candidate who accepts public funding, and then breaks the law on a matter involving campaign spending, risks being ousted from public office. On November 9, an Administrative Law Judge upheld the recommendation of the commission that runs the public funding law, and ruled that State Representative Doug Quelland should lose his seat in the legislature. See this story.

The legislator, Doug Quelland, had taken public funding in 2008, but then appears to have spent additional private campaign funds on his campaign secretly. His attorney says Quelland will now file a lawsuit to retain his seat. Assuming Quelland is eventually ousted, he will be the second state legislator in Arizona to have been ousted.

By a strange coincidence, two pending ballot access cases in the Eleventh Circuit recently hit procedural bumps, but the Court has cleared these away, and the two cases will proceed.

In Georgia, the Attorney General had somehow missed an October deadline to file a response brief, but on October 29 the 11th circuit excused this error and let the state’s brief be filed late. That occurred in Coffield v Handel, the lawsuit challenging the number of signatures needed for an independent candidate for U.S. House.

In Alabama, the attorney for an independent candidate had missed an October deadline to file relevant extracts from the U.S. District Court record, but on November 6 the 11th circuit excused that error as well. That occurred in Shugart v Chapman, the lawsuit challenging the number of signatures needed for an independent candidate for U.S. House.