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.

The Texas Democratic Party has asked the U.S. Justice Department, Voting Rights Section, to retroactively approve its rules for apportioning delegates to the national convention. The 2008 rules were somewhat different than the 2004 state party rules, concerning delegates chosen by caucus. Texas Democrats used a hybrid primary/caucus system in 2008. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that the Voting Rights Act, section 5, covers political parties as well as governments. Section 5 requires that changes in election procedures (in some parts of the U.S.) must be approved by the Justice Department.

The Texas Democratic Party still does not concede that it needed to seek pre-clearance, but it has done so because of a federal court decision of August 25, called LULAC of Texas v Texas Democratic Party, issued by a 3-judge U.S. District Court in San Antonio.