Court in at least three cities are holding hearings on Wednesday, October 8:

1. Tennessee Senator Rosalind Kurita is asking a federal court to put her back on the ballot. She had won the Democratic primary in August, but the Democratic Party refused to accept that outcome because it said too many Republicans voted in the Democratic primary. The October 6 decision from the 9th circuit in Alaskan Independence Party v State should be useful to her. The real reason Kurita was decertified as a Democratic nominee is because she supported a Republican for State Senate leader last year. The Alaskan Independence Party decision from the 9th circuit said that parties cannot bar candidates from running in party primaries, regardless of their politics. The 9th circuit does not control what happens in a U.S. District Court in Tennessee, but the opinion will be influential. UPDATE: this hearing is being held on Friday, October 10. In the meantime, the state has filed a brief claiming that it is too late to put Kurita on the ballot.

2. The Connecticut Libertarian Party has a status conference in federal court over Bob Barr’s ballot status. The state has hinted that if the party has convincing evidence that the Barr petition has at least 7,500 valid signatures, the case can be resolved.

3. The long-awaited trial begins in state court in Minneapolis, over whether anything in the Minnesota Constitution bars Instant-Runoff Voting.

4. The Green Party of Vermont has a pro se case arguing that it is a qualified party, which has a hearing in state court in Montpelier on October 8. The case is Craig Hill v Secretary of State, 640-9-08. The party was unable to find an attorney to represent it, so the plaintiff is the party’s candidate for U.S. House, who will argue even though he is not an attorney. UPDATE: the hearing was held, and now a new round of briefs is about to be filed.

The Economist Magazine has polled its readers in all 195 nations of the world, on whether they want Barack Obama or John McCain to win the presidential election. Unfortunately readers are not able to vote for anyone else.

Then, the Economist created an imaginary “world electoral college”, assigning a number of electoral votes to each nation of the world, relative to its population. As of the evening of October 7, the “popular vote” is 20,413 Obama; 4,159 McCain. The “world electoral college” vote is Obama 8,482; McCain 16. McCain is only carrying Andorra, Georgia, and Macedonia. For the breakdown of the vote in each nation, see here. About one-fourth of the nations are marked simply as blank because not enough votes have been cast from such countries.

The Georgia Libertarian Party is running John Monds for Public Service Commission. This is a partisan statewide race. Monds has no Democratic opponent. The only candidate besides Monds is the incumbent Commissioner, H. Doug Everett, the Republican nominee. This will be the first 2-way statewide race that a Georgia Libertarian has been in since 1994, when Sharon Harris was one of only two candidates for Agriculture Commissioner. Harris received 301,416 votes, or 22.6%. 1994 was a low turnout year in Georgia. If Monds gets the same percentage that Harris got, and if Georgia has a turnout in 2008 that is no higher than the 2004 turnout of 3,300,000, then Monds will get 750,000 votes.