Columbia, South Carolina is holding its regular election for city officers on April 6. One city council district, district 2, was not scheduled to have an election this year. However, the incumbent resigned abruptly on March 9. The city then set a special election for that district for April 6, giving candidates only 4 days to file.

On March 29, a federal lawsuit was filed to stop the special election. See this story. Plaintiffs charge that the election cannot be fair because potential candidates had such a narrow window in which to file. However, the basis for the federal lawsuit is that the city has changed its procedures for this special election and did not pre-clear those changes with the U.S. Justice Department. Absentee voting had already started for the regularly city election, and voters who already voted, who live in District 2, were given ballots that didn’t even include the special election.

The March 31 issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer has this editorial, criticizing Ohio Secretary of State’s recent directive that changes the rules on which party’s primary ballot a voter may select in the May 2010 primary. As the editorial says, Ohio is an open primary state, meaning that the voter registration form does not ask voters to choose a party. But the Secretary of State’s directive says that if someone voted in one party’s primary in 2008, that same voter can’t choose a different party’s primary in 2008 unless that voter signs a declaration of loyalty to that party’s ideas.

Raw Story published this article on March 30. It alleges that Caroline Hunter, who is a Federal Election Commissioner in her first term, acted unethically in 2004 by providing misleading testimony to a federal court in New Jersey.

In 1987 the Republican National Committee had signed a consent decree, promising not to “engage in, nor assist or participate in any ballot security programs” that had not been pre-cleared by the judge in that 1987 case. That case had been filed in New Jersey because it concerned Republican attempts to challenge voters in Newark, New Jersey. A “ballot security program” means a mass mailing by the Republican Party to registered voters in a certain area, designed to develop a list of voters to challenge on election day at the polls. The party would challenge a voter if the postal mail sent by the party to that voter had been returned by the post office.

In 2004, the Democratic Party believed that the Republican National Committee was again helping a ballot security program, this time in Ohio. The Democratic Party sued the Republican National Committee, alleging that the RNC was violating the 1987 consent decree. The case returned to the federal court in New Jersey. Caroline Hunter, who was then an attorney for the RNC, filed an affidavit saying “The RNC is not initiating, controlling, or funding any programs of voter challenges, including the effort by the Ohio Republican Party to challenge voter registrations in Ohio.” However, in the 2004 case, the court ruled that the RNC was participating in the Ohio challenge. This story is only news now because Raw Story and writer Brad Jacobson noticed that Caroline Hunter seems to have provided a misleading affidavit in the 2004 court case, which is news because she is now one of the six Federal Election Commissioners.