On June 8, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear NAACP v Billups, 08-1231, the case over Georgia’s law requiring voters at the polls to show government photo-ID.

On June 8, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Caperton v Massey Coal Company, 08-22. The Court ruled 5-4 that when a judge receives very large campaign contributions from one side in a lawsuit, the judge must recuse himself or herself. Here is the Opinion, thanks to scotusblog. Here is a very interesting commentary about the decision by Professor Rick Pildes. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for that link.

Pildes writes about U.S. Supreme Court Justices who are are willing to take judicial action in extreme cases of unfairness, even when those justices have a difficult time drawing a line between extreme examples of that unfairness and somewhat less extreme examples. Pildes identifies Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy as two such justices. He points out the similarity of the West Virginia judicial recusal case, and cases on partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering. He could also have suggested ballot access examples, because it isn’t always easy for courts to draw a line between too-difficult requirements and requirements that are not too difficult.

On June 3, the New York legislature passed A8501, which streamlines procedures for one particular type of local initiative. The bill deals with initiatives to abolish a local government, or initiatives to consolidate two or more local governments. Existing law requires that such an initiative petition include the signatures of 33% of the registered voters. The bill would change that to 10% of the registered voters, or 500 voters, whichever is less. For very small entities (those with fewer than 500 voters), the petition would be 20%. For a countywide petition, the requirement would be 25% of the registered voters, or 15,000 signatures, whichever is less. Under the bill, circulators for such petitions may live anywhere in the state (current law requires them to live in the jurisdiction that is being affected). See this article. This seems to be the only election law bill likely to pass in this year’s session, which ends in less than three weeks.

New York has 10,521 local government units. Most of them are special districts. Experts on public administration generally agree that New York state wastes tax dollars because it has too many local governments and special districts.