On August 21, U.S. District Court Judge Edmund A. Sargus issued a temporary injunction to block an Ohio campaign finance law. The case is O’Brien v Brunner, 2:09-cv-733, sou. dist. The law says if one candidate in a race spends a considerable amount of his or her own money, the opponents of that candidate are freed from having to obey contribution limits when they raise money. See this story. The case had been filed on August 20 by Sandra O’Brien, a Republican running in next year’s primary for Secretary of State. The injunctive relief prevents one of her opponents, State Senator Jon Husted, from immediately raising large contributions.

The outcome was not surprising, because last year the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a similar federal campaign law in Davis v Federal Election Commission.

On August 21, a County Commissioner in La Plata County, Colorado, switched her registration from “Democratic” to “independent”. See this story. Colorado, like most states, has partisan elections for county office. The Commissioner who switched, Joelle Riddle, says she believes county office elections should be non-partisan. She has not said if she will run for re-election in 2010 as an independent.

Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle Political Writer, published this article on August 21, titled “State GOP May Restrict Primary to Party Members.” The article says that the state party convention on September 25-27 will consider changing the rule that now permits independent voters to vote for all public office (except president) in Republican primaries.

It is true that the idea of excluding independents is on the agenda, but the sponsor of the idea, Jon Fleischman, one of the 9 vice-chairs of the state party, has been introducing his idea at each of the preceding ten state conventions, and each time the party votes against the idea, and votes to continue letting independents vote. It is not likely that the Republican state convention in Indian Wells next month will exclude independent voters from the non-presidential Republican primaries.