Although Louisiana holds a presidential primary on February 9, the Republican Party chooses its delegates to the national convention with a two-step caucus/convention system. The first round was held on January 22, when approximately 10,000 Louisiana Republicans turned out to vote in eleven different cities for delegate to the state convention. Each U.S. House district chose 15 delegates.

It appears that Ron Paul supporters outnumbered the supporters of any of his opponents. But since this was predicted, the supporters of Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, cooperated to set up a “fusion” slate of unpledged candidates for Delegate. The “fusion” slate, labeled the “Pro-Life/Pro-Family” slate, beat the Ron Paul slate in each of the 7 U.S. House districts. Formally, the “fusion” slate billed itself as an “uncommitted” slate, and no one really knows how many supporters of each presidential candidate are on the fusion slate, except the campaigns themselves.

The U.S. Supreme Court released one opinion on January 22, but it wasn’t an election law opinion. The Court won’t release any more opinions until the week beginning with January 28. Therefore, the Washington state “top-two” primary case will not be coming out this week. It was argued back on October 1, 2007, so it is taking longer than most observers had expected.

According to Darrell Castle, the long-awaited joint Constitution, Green and Libertarian Party lawsuit against the Tennessee ballot access law for new and minor parties will be filed on January 23. Darrell Castle is the local cooperating attorney for the case. As noted in earlier posts, no party besides the Democratic and Republican Parties has been ballot-qualified in Tennessee since 1972. Many attempts have been made, but they have all failed.