On October 20, U.S. District Court Judge John C. Coughenour set a trial date in Washington State Republican Party v State, cv-05-927. This is the lawsuit over the constitutionality of the “top-two” election system. The attorneys estimate the trial will last for four or five days and will involve social science experts.
On the afternoon of October 20, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 8-1 to forbid the Secretary of State of Washington from releasing the names and addresses of people who signed the R-71 Referendum petition. The dissenter is Justice John Paul Stevens. Here is the order.
The Court’s order says that the ban will remain in effect until the lower courts have finished deciding whether the Constitution requires that such petitions be kept private. Then, if the losing side asks the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the constitutional case, and the Court denies cert, then at that point (assuming the state has won) the ban would be automatically terminated. But, if the U.S. Supreme Court at that point decides to accept the case for full review, the ban would remain in effect until after the U.S. Supreme Court had issued its full opinion. Of course, if at that point the state had lost, the ban would also continue to remain, obviously. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
As noted earlier, on October 16, a U.S. District Court ordered Virginia to count approximately 2,000 foreign absentee votes from the November 2008 election. The Board had not previously considered them valid votes, since they arrived in the mail too late, under state law. The Board will meet on October 21 to decide whether to appeal the ruling. If the Board decides not to appeal the ruling, the votes will probably be counted in the next few weeks. If they are counted, the presidential vote totals from November 2008 will surely increase for all the six candidates who were on the Virginia ballot. They were Barack Obama, John McCain, Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, and Cynthia McKinney.
The Board will meet in public in the State Capitol, House Hearing Room One, at 10 a.m. However, the Board may go into executive session during the meeting.
On October 20, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy referred Doe v Reed to the full U.S. Supreme Court. Previously Kennedy had been handling the matter himself, because he has jurisdiction over certain motions relating to the 9th circuit. It is not at all surprising Kennedy referred the matter to the full Court, since the Court is in session now. See this Seattle Post-Intelligencer story. The case number in the U.S. Supreme Court is 09A356.
Edward B. Foley, Director of the Election Law project at Moritz College of Law, has this interesting article about problems with the Electoral College that are not usually discussed. His article focuses on the potential problems when one state’s popular vote is disputed, and the entire presidential election turns on which way that state goes. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.
