In 2008, the U.S. government had sued Euclid, Ohio, under the Voting Rights Act, concerning School Board elections. Euclid is 45% black, but almost no black had ever been elected to the School Board under the city’s at-large elections. The U.S. District Court, on July 13, 2009, had ordered that Euclid use Limited Voting for its School Board elections. But on September 10, the federal government appealed that order to the 6th circuit.

Limited Voting provides that each voter may only cast one vote, even though either two or three seats are open in that particular year. Apparently the Justice Department does not like this solution, and will probably be seeking single-member districts.

On September 21, a state court judge in New Jersey said that the lawsuit filed on September 18, attacking New Jersey’s discriminatory ballot design, cannot be settled in time to affect the November 3, 2009 gubernatorial election. See this story. That does not mean that the lawsuit will not proceed. Probably a majority of constitutional election law lawsuits are not decided until after the election.

New Jersey has the worst ballot design of any state, for partisan elections, relative to how independent and minor party candidates are treated. Almost all of the counties print party column headings in large print, that say “Democratic”, “Republican”, and “Nomination by Petition.” All the non-major party candidates are squeezed into the “Nomination by Petition” column (sometimes there is more than one such column).

The Complaint filed last week by independent New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett, and Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Kaplan, is now available here. It is Olson v Corzine, and challenges the format of New Jersey ballots, which always place the Democratic and Republican nominees in the best spots on the November ballots. The complaint is very strong on listing social science research that shows that ballot format does make a difference in voting behavior.