The U.S. Court of Appeals, 4th circuit, has set a briefing schedule in South Carolina Green Party v South Carolina Election Commission. All the briefs will be in by October 30. The case concerns the constitutionality of a South Carolina law that says if one party has already nominated its candidate for a particular office, and then that nominee tries and fails to get the nomination of another party, then the first party is no longer able to run that candidate in the November election. In the particular incident which triggered the lawsuit, the Green Party nominated Eugene Platt for the legislature. Later, Platt tried to get the Democratic nomination as well (South Carolina permits two parties to jointly run the same nominee). Because Platt tried to get the Democratic nomination and failed, the Green Party was told that it couldn’t run Platt as its own nominee.

Colorado has term limits for county elected offices, but permits the voters of a county to modify or ease those term limits if they wish. Recently the Adams County Commissioners voted to ask the voters if they wish to ease term limits for county office. However, the proposed local ballot question was worded to cover the office of District Attorney.

But, Colorado is one of the many states in which not all counties have their own District Attorney. Instead, Adams County is grouped with Broomfield County as a unit, to elect a single District Attorney. Many states follow this policy because there are so many low-population counties in the U.S., it doesn’t make sense to provide a District Attorney for each county.

On September 15, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled orally from the bench that Adams County can’t vote on extending term limits for District Attorney all by itself. The voters of Broomfield County must be involved as well. Since no one in Broomfield County had moved to put the matter to a vote, the ruling is that Adams County can’t vote, all by itself, on whether to extend term limits for District Attorney. The case is Dambman v Long, 09cv-2167.

In the last ten days, the only bill in the U.S. House of Representatives on the subject of elections that has gained more than one co-sponsor is HR 1826, the bill to provide for non-discriminatory public funding for congressional candidates. It now has 86 co-sponsors, compared to 79 co-sponsors as of September 10.

One of the most surprising aspects of election law legislation in Congress this year is the failure of the bill to get a voting member in the U.S. House for the District of Columbia. Even strong Democratic Party majorities in both houses of Congress couldn’t save the bill, which bogged down because District of Columbia politicians were so opposed to an amendment to that bill to give more rights for gun-owners in D.C. This is the last session of Congress in which the bill can gain support from some Republicans on the basis that the same bill gives another seat to Utah. After this year’s session, that deal is useless, because Utah will be getting its fourth seat in 2011 anyway, based on the 2010 census results.