Back on February 18, 2009, the ACLU Voting Rights office sued South Dakota election officials for removing two voters from the voter registration rolls, in apparent disregard of state law. South Dakota, like most states, does not permit felons to vote while they are imprisoned. The lawsuit charged that two voters had their names removed from the rolls after they were convicted of a felony, even though they were not sentenced to prison. This apparently happened because communication between federal courts and elections officials is faulty. The federal court e-mails a message to the Secretary of State when someone is convicted of a felony in federal court in South Dakota. But the e-mail does not disclose whether that individual was sentenced to prison or not. Elections officials assumed the two individuals were sent to prison (even though they weren’t sentenced to prison), and removed them from the rolls.

On February 8, 2010, nearly a year after the initial case was filed, the ACLU expanded the case, and seeks to make it a class action. This is because the ACLU believes the problem involves hundreds of individuals, not just two individuals. Here is the amended complaint. The case is Janis v Nelson, 09-5019.

On March 6, U.S. House member Eric Massa, who represents New York’s 29th district, said he will resign from the House on March 8. New York election law does not require a special election for a member of the House who resigns at this point in the election cycle. The Governor has discretion as to whether to call a special election. See this story.

The U.S. Constitution does not permit appointments to the U.S. House. If there is no special election, the seat will be vacant until after the November 2010 election.

The election for California Secretary of State has three well-known election law activists this year, although the type of election law activism each has engaged in are very different from each other.

Christina Tobin is the only candidate seeking the Libertarian Party nomination. Here is her web page. She is the founder of Free and Equal, which has become a major source of financial backing for efforts to improve ballot access laws and other election laws. For example, Free and Equal has made important contributions to the Oklahoma lobbying effort for better ballot access. Tobin also has her own paid petitioning company. She served as Ralph Nader’s ballot access petition coordinator in 2008, a year in which every single Nader petition that was attempted, was successful (Nader was on in 45 states in 2008, more than at any other year in which he ran). She was responsible for arranging the only minor party/independent presidential debate in 2008 that was televised. That debate was between Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin and was at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. She also sponsored the only vice-presidential debate for minor party and independent candidates of 2008, at which Wayne A. Root, Matt Gonzalez, and Darrell Castle participated, in Las Vegas.

Free and Equal also sponsored two Illinois primary gubernatorial debates in the 2010 campaign season.

The Democratic incumbent, Debra Bowen, is running for re-election. During her first term, she was active in changing California law and policy in regard to electronic vote-counting machines. All California vote-counting machines now have a paper trail. Before she was Secretary of State, she was a state legislator, and she is responsible for making California the first state to have all pending bills in the state legislature on a state web page. Here is her campaign web page.

Another well-known election law activist running for Secretary of State is Orly Taitz, who is running in the Republican primary. Here is her web page. She is the most famous of the various attorneys who have been filing lawsuits ever since 2008, alleging that President Barack Obama does not meet the constitutional qualifications to be President. Taitz lives in Orange County, California.

The only other candidate for Secretary of State who has an active campaign, so far, is Damon Dunn, who is seeking the Republican nomination. He was a football player for Stanford while in college, and he has been active in the real estate business, but he has never engaged in any activity to alter or reform any aspect of election administration or election law. However, he has been endorsed by many California Republican Party office-holders. Here is his web page.