On August 17, Faye Coffield filed her first brief in the 11th circuit, in Coffield v Handel, 09-13277, the case challenging the 5% (of the number of registered voters) petition requirement for minor party and independent candidates for U.S. House. As the brief makes abundantly clear, no one has completed this petition since 1964, and back in 1964, the petition was due in October of the election year and the signatures were presumed to be valid. Here is the brief.

The lower court had upheld the law on the basis that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld the 5% petition in Jenness v Fortson in 1971. However, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971 had depended on the fact that the statewide petition had been successfully used in 1966 and 1968. The evidence shows that statewide petitions are easier to circulate than district petitions, because so many signatures for district petitions are always invalidated because the signer is a registered voter but lives in the wrong district. Statewide petitions don’t have that difficulty.

According to this story in the New York Daily News, the New York City Board of Elections has printed absentee ballots in City Councilman Alan Gerson’s race that do not include Gerson’s name. This, despite the fact that last week the New York Supreme Court ordered him restored to the ballot. This is not a mistake; the New York City Board of Elections says it is policy.

That policy violates what the U.S. Supreme Court said in American Party of Texas v White. That 1974 decision upheld many Texas state ballot access laws, but the one victorious point in that case was that the U.S. Supreme Court said it violates the U.S. Constitution to omit a candidate (who is on the regular ballots) from absentee ballots. This part of the decision is on pages 794-795 in U.S. Reports. Thanks to Kimberly Wilder for the link.

On August 17, the New Jersey Sierra Club announced that it is endorsing Chris Daggett for Governor, in the November 2009 election. Daggett is an independent candidate who was formerly head of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection. The Sierra Club only rarely endorsed candidates who are not nominees of either major party.