On November 12, a lower state court judge in Wheeling, West Virginia, ruled that a city initiative to repeal the two-police-in-one-police-car law should not appear on the ballot. The circulators didn’t notarize the signatures. The local rule for initiatives is peculiar, because state law does not require candidate ballot access petitions to be notarized. See this story.

The circulators say they may do their petition all over again. They also point out that the City Clerk hadn’t told them about the notarization requirement and had even accepted the unnotarized petitions. The city had then sued the petitioners to get a definitive ruling. This is the same case in which the Fraternal Order of Police had intervened in the case, and had won an earlier ruling that the city should make the names and addresses of signers available to the Police. The case is Wheeling v Jones, Ohio County, 09-c-270.

On October 29, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., dismissed the case Rodearmel v Clinton, 1:09-cv-171. Here is the 12-page opinion. It says that the State Department foreign service officer who filed the lawsuit lacks standing. The U.S. Constitution, Article I, sec. 6, clause 2, says that no member of Congress may be appointed to a federal executive position if Congress had increased the salary of that position while that member of Congress had been in Congress. The Defendant in this case is Hillary Rodham Clinton, who went from being a U.S. Senator, to Secretary of State, even though the salary of the Secretary of State had risen while Clinton was in the U.S. Senate.

On November 3, Judicial Watch, which sponsored the lawsuit, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.

According to this newspaper story, the totals for the special U.S. House election on November 3 are now: Bill Owens (Democratic, Working Families) 66,698; Doug Hoffman (Conservative) 63,672. The story does not give an updated total for the third candidate in the race, Dede Scozzafava (Republican, Independence). There are still approximately 10,000 absentee votes to be counted. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link.