The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, no. 08-205, on March 24. Citizens United is a corporation with 501(c)(4) (tax exempt) status. It produced a movie in late 2007 called “Hillary, the Movie” and wanted to air it in movie theaters and also make it available on cable television, but only “on demand” from the cable subscriber. The FEC said that Citizens United must reveal the names of all the individuals who had contributed money toward making the movie, so Citizens United pulled the movie out of theaters and never made it available on Cable. The lower court upheld the FEC’s position.

New York City is holding a special election to fill the vacant City Council seat in the 32nd district in Brooklyn. The election is February 24. At a debate among the four candidates held on February 19, the audience expressed hostility toward one of the candidates, Professor Geraldine Chapey, because she had successfully challenged the ballot access petitions of one of her opponents, Frank Gulluscio. See this article.

Ironically, a few days later, the candidate who had successfully challenged one of her oppponents off the ballot, also succeeded in knocking another of her opponents off the ballot. See this story. Glenn DiResto was removed from the ballot because his partisan label, “Families First”, was deemed too similar to “Working Families”, and in special elections, candidates cannot use the name of a qualified party as a ballot label.

On February 19, the Franklin County, Ohio, Board of Elections determined that two incumbent members of the Columbus School Board are off the November 2009 ballot because they failed to get at least 300 valid signatures. Although Ohio permits write-ins, another law says that someone who submitted a petition to be on the ballot, and whose petition was deficient, may not qualify as a declared write-in candidate. See this story. Thanks to Steve Linnabary for the link.