On January 4, a Wyoming state trial court dismissed the lawsuit Newcomb v Gray, Albany District Court, 2023-cv-0036100. This is a lawsuit to keep former President Donald Trump off the November ballot. The judge said the case is premature, and could be filed later. See this story.
On January 3, the Libertarian National Committee filed this brief in the Sixth Circuit, in Libertarian National Committee v Saliba, 23-1856. This is the lawsuit in which the LNC is suing some of the Michigan Libertarian Party nominees in the 2022 election for trademark infringement.
Georgia permits larger donations to the campaigns of Republicans and Democrats (who are running for Governor or Lieutenant Governor) than to other candidates. The Georgia Libertarian Party is currently challenging that discriminatory policy in the Eleventh Circuit.
The judges recently asked both sides to submit a supplemental letter brief on whether the case is now moot, because the 2022 election is over. Here is the Document submitted by the Libertarian Party on January 5.
Here is the state’s Document.
On January 5, the Maine Secretary of State’s office confirmed that No Labels is a qualified party in Maine, by virtue of having more than 5,000 registered voters. No Labels is now ballot qualified in 13 states, and the organization says it is currently petitioning in 14 other states.
On January 5, an amicus brief was filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v Anderson, 23-719 by twenty-five states. The brief makes some arguments that haven’t been made by others who have litigated the Trump ballot access case.
The brief’s main point is that Congress, not state courts, is responsible for determining whether an individual is an insurrectionist. It says that if Trump is an insurrectionist because of his actions on the days leading up to and including January 6, 2021, then on January 6, 2021, he should have immediately ceased to be president. Section three says insurrectionists cannot “hold” the office, and says nothing about elections. So, logically, if Trump became an insurrectionist no later than January 6, 2021, at that point he could not legally continue to serve as president, and Mike Pence should have been president between January 6, 2021, and January 20, 2021. Only Congress could have made that decision. Of course, this is only a small part of the brief.
The brief contains many precedents from “birther” lawsuits filed against putting Barack Obama on various ballots. These little-known court decisions always decided that it is not up to state elections officials to decide whether Obama met the “natural-birth” requirement. The plaintiffs in these cases wanted to present evidence about birth certificate documents, but the courts weren’t interested. Some of the “birthers” are named in the brief, in their capacity as plaintiffs in “birther” lawsuits, such as Orly Taitz, Markham Robinson, Michael Voeltz, Charles Kershner, and others. Robinson was state chair of the American Independent Party of California at the time he sued.
Although the amicus is on behalf of twenty-five states, it seems to have been initiated by state officials from Indiana and West Virginia.
