California State Senator Alan Lowenthal has introduced SB 1322, which deletes some state laws that discriminate against members of the Communist Party. California’s Constitution, Article 20, says that no one may run for either partisan office or non-partisan office, if that person is a member of the Communist Party, or has been within the last 5 years. The Lowenthal bill does not try to repeal that. It does repeal statutes that bar party members from being public school teachers, and statutes that require organizations that want to meet in a public school to sign an affidavit that they are Communist “fronts”.

The bill has a hearing on April 2 in the Senate Education Committee. If SB 1322 passes, it will probably then be possible to repeal various California election laws that also single out Communist Party members. California is one of only six states that has such election laws. The others are Illinois, Arkansas, Kansas, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. None of these laws are enforceable. In 1974 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that they violate the First Amendment, in a case called Communist Party of Indiana v Whitcomb. The decision was unanimous.

Governor Jim Douglas of Vermont will either sign or veto SB 108 by Monday, April 7. The bill provides that general elections for Congress should use Instant-Runoff Voting. No state legislature had ever before provided for IRV in statewide general elections.

On March 27, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the petition-checking procedures used in 2004 for independent presidential petitions are legal. Peroutka v Cronin, no. 27233. Here is the decision.

The decision is somewhat maddening. Plaintiffs (Michael Peroutka, Constitution Party presidential candidate, and Ralph Nader, independent presidential candidate) had complained that even though the petition requires signers to list their birthdates, the state won’t use the birthdate information to help them find a voter on the rolls. The Court simply said that Hawaii regulations do not require elections officials to use the birthdate.

Plaintiffs had complained that when a signer has bad handwriting, the state simply refused to try to decipher that handwriting. The Court merely quoted the regulations, which say that elections officials “may” disregard signatures with bad handwriting.

Plaintiffs had argued that the same person who is in charge of checking signatures, is also the person who is in charge of hearing an appeal of his own work. The Court merely said there is nothing illegal about that.

The decision is devoid of any discussion of voting rights, or constitutionality. The parallel federal court case over these same issues is still alive, and the federal court is free to issue its own ruling and to disagree with the State Supreme Court. In a parallel situation, the Michigan Supreme Court had ruled on November 21, 2007, that a Michigan state law giving the list of presidential primary voters only to the two major parties is constitutional. That did not stop a U.S. District Court from coming to the opposite conclusion on March 26, 2008.