On April 21, the Arizona House passed SB 1024 by the narrow margin of 31-29. Every member of the House cast a vote. This is the bill which started out in the Senate as a bill to remove the names of presidential electors from the November ballot. Earlier this week, the bill was amended in the House to add on a provision that presidential nominees of established political parties must attach documents proving that they meet the Constitutional qualifications.

The bill says such documents are due 10 days after the national parties certify the names of the presidential nominees. But because the 2012 Democratic convention will not choose a presidential nominee until September 3, and because the federal government now requires states to mail foreign absentee ballots at least 45 days before the general election, the bill’s provisions cannot be enforced. The bill says presidential nominees who don’t submit satisfactory documents must be left off the ballot. But the ballots, at least in 2012, will already have been printed before the documents are due. The bill is now getting press attention; see this story.

The bill now returns to the Senate, to see if the Senate will accept the presidential qualifications amendment.

On April 21, Ralph Nader’s attorney Oliver Hall argued in the D.C. Court of Appeals that the Pennsylvania court order, awarding $81,000 to the people who challenged Nader’s ballot access petition in 2004, was fundamentally unjust. See this story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The people who challenged Nader’s petition in 2004 used state government employees, on government time, as well as state government databanks and computers. Today is the first time that any court has been willing to hold oral arguments on Nader’s claim that the Pennsylvania challenge system, as it worked in 2004, is illegitimate.

The case is in court in Washington, D.C., because that is where Nader’s bank account is. Generally it is very tough for any attorney to persuade state courts in one state not to honor a court order from another state. Of course D.C. is not a state, but it has courts that are the functional equivalent of state courts. The D.C. Appeals Court is not the same as the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Thanks to Ed Bortz for the link.

On April 20, the California Senate Elections Committee passed SB 1346 by a vote of 3-2. This bill provides for Instant Runoff Voting for special elections for U.S. House and state legislature, if all the counties in that district agree.