On March 16, this brief was filed in the California State Court of Appeals. The case is Clark v Superior Court, no. C064430. The issue is how Proposition 14 should be described on the California June 8, 2010 ballot. The brief is 16 pages but there are another 15 pages of attachments at the end. The heart of the argument is on pages 11-16.
On March 15, several groups that desire to qualify initiatives for the ballot filed a lawsuit against several Colorado laws. The lawsuit attacks the requirement that initiative circulators live in Colorado. It also attacks a Colorado law that says circulators must attend a training class, and still another law that at least 80% of any pay to a circulator must not be connected to how many signatures the circulator obtains.
The case is Independence Institute v Buescher. Thanks to Paul Jacob for the news.
On March 16, a New Jersey Superior Court ruled that it is possible that states may provide for recall of members of Congress, and that such a provision would not violate the U.S. Constitution. The case is Committee to Recall Robert Menendez from the Office of U.S. Senator v Wells, A-2254-09T1.
As a result, the court said that the New Jersey Secretary of State should let the recall group have copies of the recall petition. Since the law requires a number of signers equal to 25% of the number of registered voters to get the recall on the ballot, it is very unlikely the group can get enough valid signatures. Over 1,200,000 valid signatures would be required.
This is only the second known decision on whether states may have procedures for recall of members of Congress. An Idaho state court in 1967 said that the U.S. Constitution does not permit recall for Congress.
The New Jersey court did not say that recall is definitely permitted. The decision says, “To summarize, we neither declare the recall provision in our State Constitution as applied to a U.S. Senator definitively valid or invalid.” Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
Illinois HB 6214 lowers the number of signatures for independent candidates. On March 15, the House Executive Committee sent it to the Rules Committee. It had already been in the Rules Committee once before, and then it had gone to the Executive Committee. If the Executive Committee had wanted the bill to advance, it would have sent it to the Elections and Campaign Reform Committee. But the Executive Committee didn’t want the bill to advance.
New Hampshire HB 1188, which lowers the number of signatures for candidates to get on the November ballot, has been tabled in the House, even though it had passed the Election Law Committee on February 16. New Hampshire activists are trying to learn what happened to the bill.
The New Hampshire legislature has never made ballot access easier. Every time the laws are changed in New Hampshire, the change is in the direction of greater exclusion. New Hampshire is also one of only three states that has never had a ballot access law declared unconstitutional.
