On April 19, a U.S. District Court struck down the law that requires independent presidential candidates in Idaho to obtain 6,550 valid signatures. The basis for the decision is that Idaho law requires independent candidates for other statewide office to collect exactly 1,000 valid signatures. The presidential requirement, expressed in the law, is 1% of the last presidential vote cast. The case is Daien v Ysursa, cv09-22-S-REB. Here is the decision.

The decision also strikes down Idaho’s ban on out-of-state circulators for independent petitions.

The 34-page decision says that it is not even rational for Idaho to require almost seven times as many signatures for an independent presidential candidate, as for an independent candidate for other statewide office. This is the first decision that strikes down the number of signatures for one type of statewide independent candidate, on the grounds that it is significantly more difficult than the number of signatures for an independent candidate for some other statewide office.

Surprisingly, many states require significantly different signature requirements for one statewide office, than for other statewide offices. States that require fewer signatures for an independent for president, than an independent for other statewide office, are Alabama and Arkansas. States that require significantly more signatures for an independent presidential candidate, than for an independent candidate for other statewide office, besides Idaho, are Florida, Hawaii, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas.

On April 19, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published the first of a two-part series about Pennsylvania’s unique policy of charging large amounts of money to candidates who file petitions to get on the ballot, and whose petitions are invalidated. Here is the first installment.

On April 19, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Citizens for Police Accountability v Browning, 09-861, the case over petitioning at the polls. The case had been filed by a group that was attempting to qualify a local initiative. The U.S. District Court had issued an order, letting the group put its petitioners within 25 feet of the polls, so that the petitioners could ask voters leaving the polling place to sign the petition. The basis for the order had been that because Florida lets exit pollsters stand 25 feet away, the law requiring petitioners to stand 100 feet away is a content-based restriction on speech. But the 11th circuit had reversed that order. Technically, the case only concerned whether an injunction should have been granted, not whether the law is unconstitutional.