The oldest election law case is Initiative & Referendum Institute v U.S. Postal Service, which was filed in 2000 and is still in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The case concerns the constitutionality of a postal regulation making it illegal for petition circulators to be on interior post office sidewalks. Several months ago, the Judge arranged for the Postal Service to do a large random sample of postmasters, to see whether postmasters have noticed people petitioning, handing out leaflets, and engaged in other First Amendment activity on those sidewalks.

The survey replies are now in. There are 1,000 pages of data. A very preliminary look at them suggests that there is a lot of expressive activity on post office sidewalks. This is good for the lawsuit, because it supports the idea that post office sidewalks are a traditional public forum. However, this case is likely to take another six months before a decision is reached.

Even though the Massachusetts legislature adjourns for the year on November 21, the Massachusetts Secretary of State, William Galvin, is asking the legislature to quickly pass a bill moving the presidential primary from early March to early February. Legislative leaders say they like the idea.

On November 8, Ralph Nader asked a Superior Court in Washington, D.C., not to allow his bank account to be garnished by the Pennsylvania law firm that kept him off the Pennsylvania ballot in 2004. The case was filed in D.C. because the D.C. court already has jurisdiction over the bank attachment matter. The case is Serody v Nader, 2007-3385F. UPDATE: here is the brief, and here is the evidence. Both are interesting and easy to understand and not unduly long.

Normally, in cases involving whether to order a bank to deliver up funds to someone who is hostile to the person with the bank account, the underlying merits of the original dispute may not be re-litigated. However, there are narrow exceptions.

In this case, Nader’s brief documents that only in September 2007 did Nader learn that the law firm that wants approximately $80,000 from Nader’s account failed to reveal several conflicts of interest. The Nader filing shows that the law firm had extended an open invitation to hire one of the future Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justices in 1985, an invitation that the future justice accepted in 1991. That future justice was one of the justices who ruled against Nader in 2006.

The Nader filing also shows that the law firm had represented one of the other Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justices while the Nader case was pending. That justice had also ruled against Nader in 2006.

Finally, the Nader filing shows that the law firm had made large campaign contributions to all but one of the justices who ruled against Nader, and did not disclose this during the Nader litigation.

Therefore, Nader argues that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court order of 2006 that he must pay the administrative costs of removing him from the 2004 ballot is tainted, and should not be enforced against Nader. The amount of money would be approximately $100,000, except that Nader’s running-mate in 2004, Peter Camejo, already paid $20,000 toward the total.