D.C. Caldwell is a candidate for the Texas State Board of Education, district 10. This is a partisan office. His name is on both the Republican primary ballot and the Democratic primary ballot. See this story. The Texas anti-fusion law dpes not prohibit candidates from filing in both primaries, but it is unclear what will happen if he wins either or both of them. He also is seeking the Libertarian nomination, but Libertarians in Texas nominate by convention.
On February 12, U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi refused to stay his own opinion in No Labels Party v Fontes, 2:23cv-2172. Now the state of Arizona can ask the Ninth Circuit for a stay. The U.S. District Court had sided with No Labels in his earlier opinion. He had upheld the freedom of association right of No Labels to block anyone from running in the party’s primary for congress or state office.
On February 12, the Indiana Supreme Court heard State ex rel Rust v Morales, the lawsuit over the new law that says a candidate can’t get on a primary ballot unless he or she voted in the last two primaries, and in each case, chose the primary ballot of that party. The plaintiff, John Rust, won in the lower court, and the state appealed. See this story.
On February 12, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., filed a federal lawsuit against the March 15 Idaho petition deadline for independent presidential candidates. The lawsuit also challenges the requirement that the petition circulators must sign an affidavit that they are Idaho residents. And, it challenges the need for the petition to bear the name of a vice-presidential nominee. Team Kennedy v McGrane, 1:24cv-00083.
Idaho lost a lawsuit over the residency requirement for circulators in 2010, but the form still says the circulators must sign an oath that they live in Idaho.
The petition deadline was in August until a few years ago, when the legislature irrationally repealed the section of the law that covers independent presidential candidates. The Secretary of State therefore interprets the law to have a March deadline, because that is the deadline for non-presidential independent candidates. For a while the Secretary of State was in doubt about what the deadline was, but now he says it is in March.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1983 struck down early deadlines for independent presidential candidates.
The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill, a Clinton appointee. In 2020 he granted ballot access relief to proponents of an initiative, due to the covid crisis.
On February 7, this reply brief was filed in Meadors v Erie County Board of Elections, 23-1054. This is the lawsuit over New York’s May petition deadline for independent candidates. In 2019 the New York legislature had changed that deadline from August to May. The case was filed in 2021 by supporters of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, who submitted an independent candidate petition in July after he lost the primary in June. New York allows “sore losers”. But the Defendants say the early deadline is an indirect way to stop “sore losers”.
The reply brief points out that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Ohio’s independent candidate deadline in 1983 in Anderson v Celebrezze, even though the plaintiff in that case, John B. Anderson, was also a “sore loser”. The U.S. Supreme Court said in that case that early deadlines injure voters who otherwise might support an independent after the major parties have nominated their candidates, and that state deadllines must give voters a chance to do that, regardless of whether the independent candidate is a “sore loser” or not.
