On May 4, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence E. Kahn, of Albany, released a scheduling order in the lawsuit Schulz v Kelleher, 1:07-cv-943. There will be a jury trial starting September 20, 2010. The lawsuit, filed on September 12, 2007, argues that the Constitution protects a voter’s right to have his or her vote counted. The lawsuit also alleges that there is no satisfactory protection for this right unless all steps of the vote-counting process are done in public. It also alleges that, therefore, all ballots must be hand-marked and hand-counted in public. See the complaint here. The lawsuit only deals with New York voting procedures. The original complaint had voters from all states, and sued all states, but all states except New York were dismissed from the lawsuit in 2008. Therefore, the vast majority of plaintiffs and defendants are no longer in the case. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.

Great Britain counts all its votes in public, on ballots marked by hand. There is a single place within each House of Commons district in which that district’s ballots are counted, and it is open to the public during the vote-counting process.

As reported previously, the Oklahoma bill to lower the number of signatures for a previously unqualified party to get on the ballot, HB 1072, passed both Houses of the legislature last month, but a conference committee is needed because the version of the bill in the Senate differed from the version in the House. The legislature has now appointed a conference committee to set one version of the bill. That committee will be meeting sometime this week.

Maryland bills SB 947 and HB 1562 did not make any headway, and it is now too late for either of them to pass. The identical bills lowered the number of signatures for a new party from 10,000 to 5,000 signatures.