The Libertarian Party’s lawsuit to get Bob Barr on the Connecticut ballot has oral arguments on Thursday, October 23, at 11 a.m. in federal court in Bridgeport. The case is Libertarian Party of Connecticut v Bysiewicz, 3:08-cv-1513, before Judge Janet Hall. This is the first in-person hearing the case has had, even though the attorneys and the judge had previously held a status conference on the phone. It would be helpful if people who are interested in this case would attend. The U.S. Courthouse is at 915 Lafayette Boulevard in Bridgeport.

The Libertarian Party submitted enough valid signatures on the deadline, but the state says that (1) it is too late to reprint all the ballots; (2) the lawsuit is barred by the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Eleventh Amendment says people cannot sue states in federal courts. People always get around it by suing state officials, rather than the state itself. The Eleventh Amendment argument has never worked to defeat a ballot access lawsuit, in any state, ever.

The only reason that Barr isn’t already on the ballot in Connecticut is because some town clerks did a poor job of checking signatures, and invalidated signatures that were valid.

On October 25, 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court forced Cook County, Illinois, to reprint 3,000,000 ballots, because the Court felt that elections officials had erred by leaving the Harold Washington Party off the ballot. Also in 1990, Minnesota reprinted all its in-precinct ballots only a week before the general election, because the Republican nominee for Governor had resigned from the ticket and been replaced by another Republican nominee.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hopes the New York City Council will pass a bill to let him run for a third term in 2009. The vote is set for Thursday, October 23. Thomas Golisano, who was the Independence Party’s gubernatorial candidate in 1994, 1998, and 2002, says he will launch an advertising campaign against the idea, although that only makes sense if the October 23 vote is postponed. See this article for more details. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link. New York City has term limits, passed by the voters, but the City Council is free to change the law without a vote of the voters.

Bloomberg is a registered independent, but he would be free to seek any party’s nomination in 2009, notwithstanding how he is registered. He once was a Democrat. He became a Republican in 2000 and was elected as a Republican in both 2001 and 2005. He switched his registration to independent in 2007, a change that set off a frenzy of speculation that he might run for president in 2008 as an independent.

On October 21, former Arkansas Democratic legislator Dwayne Dobbins asked the Arkansas Supreme Court to put him on the ballot as the Democratic nominee for State House, district 39. He had won the May primary but the party had removed him from the ballot anyway. Dobbins argues that the party had no authority to overturn the results of its own primary, without a court order. As noted in earlier blog posts about this matter, if Dobbins doesn’t get on the ballot, the only name on the ballot for this position will be Green Party nominee Richard Carroll.