On July 8, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Mississippi ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not require a larger number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Clemons v U.S. Department of Commerce, 3:09-cv-104.  The decision is 36 pages long.

Plaintiffs had based on their argument on the need to have approximately equal representation in the U.S. House.  Given that the size of the House is 435 members, and given that the Constitution implicitly seems to bar creating U.S. House districts that include parts of one state and parts of another state, the existing system provides great inequality between states.  Wyoming has one seat for 495,304 persons, but Montana has one seat for 905,316 persons.  Therefore, an individual voter in Wyoming has more than twice the voting power of a voter in Montana, for U.S. House representation.

The decision says that the Constitution was almost amended in the 1790’s to provide for an ever-increasing size in the U.S. House.  The proposed amendment to require that Congress constantly increase the size of the U.S. House passed in Congress and would have become part of the Constitution if one more state had ratified it.  In effect, the recent decision says that the courts should not impose an idea that might have become part of the text of the Constitution itself, but did not become part of the Constitution.  Thanks to Michael Warnken for the news.  The case will almost certainly be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Although the Wisconsin Green Party is one of the oldest state Green Parties in the U.S., it has never run a candidate for Assembly in Madison, Wisconsin (in Wisconsin, as in New York and California, the lower house of the legislature is called the Assembly).  However, Ben Manski recently declared his intention to run for the 77th district seat as a Green Party nominee.

The 77th district has been represented since 1984 by Spencer Black, who is the leader of the Democrats in the Assembly, but he is retiring.  Already, before Manski announced, the race was getting publicity because open legislative seats are so rare in Madison.  See this story.  Thanks to Green Party Watch for the news about Manski.  Here is the wiki article about Ben Manski.

Louisiana Representative Ernest D. Wooton recently changed his voter registration from “Republican” to “independent”, and he also filed to run for U.S. Senate as an independent candidate.  Wooton has been in the legislature since 1999, and he will continue to be in the legislature through 2011, assuming he doesn’t resign or die.  He represents Plaquemines Parish, in the extreme southeast corner of the state.  He was also Sheriff of Plaquemines Parish 1984-1992.

The Reform Party also has a candidate in the U.S. Senate race.  He is William McShan of Leesville.  Louisiana has five qualified parties:  Democratic, Green, Libertarian, Reform, and Republican.  Incumbent U.S. Senator David Vitter, a Republican, is running for re-election.  There are eight independent candidates.  Thanks to Gene Berkman for the news about Wooton.  UPDATE:  there is a contested primary for the Libertarian Party U.S. Senate nomination, between Anthony Gentile and Randall Hayes.  Thanks to Hayes for this information.  This is the first minor party primary in Louisiana since at least the 1910’s decade.  The Progressive Party was strong in Louisiana in the 1910’s and it may have had its own primary in either 1914 or 1916.  There definitely has been no contested minor party primary in Louisiana since then.  In Louisiana, when only one person files for office in any party’s primary for all offices, the state does not hold a primary for that party.