The Libertarian Party of North Dakota is racing to finish its petition for party recognition by the April 9 deadline. The requirement is 7,000 signatures, and the party has more than 4,000.

The petition to recognize a political party has existed in North Dakota since 1939 (prior to that, there were only independent candidate petitions, which permitted the candidate using the independent procedure to choose a party label that was printed on the November ballot next to the candidate’s name). In all the years the North Dakota party petition procedure has existed, no party has ever used it in a midterm year.

Between 1939 and 1980, the party petition was 15,000 signatures, but the 8th circuit ruled in McLain v Meier that the law was too harsh. In 1981 the legislature lowered it to 7,000 signatures.

The most important offices up in North Dakota in 2010 are U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and Secretary of State. If the Libertarian Party gets on the ballot in 2010 and polls as much as 5% for Secretary of State, it will be automatically on the ballot in 2012.

Dr. Eric McGhee, a political scientist, has this Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle for March 13. The title is “Political Reforms Won’t Fix California Gridlock.” McGhee studied whether Proposition 14 would end polarization in the California legislature earlier, in a report for the Public Policy Institute of California. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link.

Scotusblog is a highly-regarded blog that reports on news from the U.S. Supreme Court. The editors of Scotusblog routinely read all the cert. petitions filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. Then, Scotusblog editors choose the ones they feel are somewhat likely to be chosen by the Court.

The March 12 edition of Scotusblog has chosen Moore v Hosemann as a “notable petition.” See here. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.

Moore v Hosemann is the Mississippi case over whether Brian Moore, the 2008 Socialist Party presidential candidate, should have been on the ballot. The ballot-qualified Natural Law Party nominated Moore, but it turned in its presidential electors ten minutes past five p.m. on the deadline day. Moore sued, arguing that the statute doesn’t indicate an hour on which such paperwork is due; by contrast, almost all other election law deadlines in the election law indicate an hour, generally 5 p.m. Moore also argued that because Article II of the U.S. Constitution says state legislatures (not states in general) have authority to write election laws governing presidential elector selection, the Secretary of State doesn’t have authority to impose a 5 p.m. deadline. The U.S. District Court said the case is moot. The 5th circuit said the case is not moot, and that Moore should re-file the case in state court.

Moore appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the 5th circuit should have itself certified the case to the State Supreme Court, instead of forcing Moore to file an entirely new lawsuit in state court. Moore also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide an auxiliary procedural point in the case. That procedural point is whether states that refuse to accept normal notice that the lawsuit is filed, and instead require the plaintiff to pay for a process server, ought to reimburse the plaintiff for the cost of the process server.

These two procedural matters may seem uninteresting to many readers of this blog, but they are both of great interest to attorneys who sometimes sue state officials. The Fifth Circuit appears to be the only circuit that has ruled adversely on the procedural point about states and the costs of serving notice of a lawsuit. All the other Circuits seem to have ruled that states must reimburse plaintiffs for the cost of hiring a process server, if the states won’t accept service by postal mail.

In the U.S. Supreme Court, the case is Moore v Hosemann, 09-982. On March 2, Mississippi had told the U.S. Supreme Court that it doesn’t wish to file a response. The U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t set a conference date for Moore v Hosemann. When it does, perhaps the Court will ask Mississippi to respond. Moore’s attorney is Law Professor Mark R. Brown of Capital Law School in Columbus, Ohio.