A Superior Court in San Francisco will hear arguments in Field v Bowen on September 14, at 9:30 a.m. This is the lawsuit that challenges two aspects of the California top-two system: (1) the ban on counting any write-in votes in November for Congress and partisan state offfice; (2) the discriminatory policy that lets some, but not all, candidates list their party affiliation on the ballot.
On August 13, a U.S. District Court Judge in Kansas struck down the law requiring circulators to be residents of Kansas. Constitution Party of Kansas v Biggs, 10-4043. This outcome was no surprise, because on July 23, the Attorney General and the attorney for the Constitution Party had filed a joint brief, arguing that the law is unconstitutional.
Kansas is in the 10th circuit, and the 10th circuit had ruled in 2008 that residency requirements for circulators are unconstitutional. See this story about the lawsuit. The list of states (in the newspaper story) that ban out-of-state circulators is not accurate. In some of the states on the list, the ban on out-of-state circulators has already been struck down.
The other half of the lawsuit is not settled yet. It concerns the state’s ban on voters registering into a party that is not ballot-qualified. The case law in the 10th circuit on that issue is also good, but Kansas is not willing to concede that point. The Constitution Party is not ballot-qualified but some Kansas voters would like to register as members of the party. Similar lawsuits have won in New Jersey, New York, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Colorado. However, relief in some of these cases has been limited to unqualified parties that do place their nominees on the November ballot. In Kansas, the Constitution Party has twice placed its presidential nominee on the ballot even while it was not a qualified party.
On August 13, U.S. District Court Judge William Smith refused to grant an injunction against the Rhode Island system for public funding for political parties. He has not yet issued an explanation for his decision. The case is Moderate Party v Lynch, 1:10-cv-265. Rhode Island lets taxpayers contribute to political parties on their state income tax forms. Many taxpayers voluntarily help fund the system without choosing one particular party to help, and that money is split up in such a way that not all ballot-qualified parties benefit. The Moderate Party is excluded because it did not run a candidate for Governor in 2006. The party did not exist back then. It became ballot-qualified late in 2009 and does have a gubernatorial candidate this year, but that doesn’t help.
The Libertarian Party statewide slate of candidates in Illinois submitted approximately 45,000 signatures at the end of June, but the petition was challenged. The “binder check” process is now complete and the party seems to have 33,545 valid signatures, well above the legal requirement of 25,000.
On August 10, a U.S. District Court in Wyoming ruled that Fremont County must use single-member districts to elect its five county commissioners. The court had already ruled back on April 29 that the current system, in which all five are elected at-large, violates the Voting Rights Act. Under the at-large system, American Indians were never able to elect one of their own.
The county had then proposed that there be two districts, one in which American Indians would be a majority and which would elect one member. And, another, more populous district, which would elect four members at-large. But on August 10, the judge rejected that plan. A special election will be required to hold a special election in 2011 for County Commission, assuming the decision stands. The Wyoming primary is August 17, and it is obviously impossible to draw single-member districts before that primary is held. County commission in Wyoming is a partisan office. Three seats are up this year, but the county had already deleted the County Commission races from the primary ballot because of the pending lawsuit. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news. The case is Large v Fremont County, 05-cv-0270.
