The 9th circuit will hear Doe v Reed, no. 09-35818, in Pasadena, California, on Wednesday, October 14. This is the case from Washington state on whether the Secretary of State should release the names and addresses of people who signed a referendum petition, to a group that wants to put that information on a web page. The particular referendum petition at issue was filed to require a vote on the civil union law passed earlier this year by the legislature. The lower court had issued an injunction, preventing the names from being released. The Secretary of State will ask the 9th circuit to reverse that injunction.

Georgia has an election law that says absentee ballots can only be mailed to the voter’s permanent address, or to a temporary address that is outside the voter’s home county or municipality. On September 29, two voters filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that that law is unconstitutional as applied to registered voters who happen to be in jail (in their home town or city) because of a misdemeanor. Ironically, if either of them had been in jail in a city other than their home city, they could have received an absentee ballot.

The case is based on a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision from New York, which struck down a virtually identical New York law. The ACLU National Voting Rights Office is representing the two voters. The case is Swann v Handel, 1:09-cv-2674, northern district. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.

The June 2009 issue of the Journal of Marketing Research has an article, “Could Ralph Nader’s Entrance and Exit Have Helped Al Gore?”. The three authors are University of Iowa Professor William Hedgcock, Professor Akshay Rao of the University of Minnesota, and Professor Haipeng Chen of Texas A&M University. On September 29, the University of Iowa News Service sent out this press release, publicizing the article.

The article is in Volume 46, pages 330-343, of the Journal of Marketing Research. It depends on experimental research conducted by the authors. The thesis is that when undecided people make a decision about something, whether it’s a political candidate or a brand of soda, and identify with that decision, that when their original choice becomes unavailable, they select an alternative option with the most similar attributes. UPDATE: here is a link to a preliminary draft of the article.