On January 16, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph F. Anderson, a Reagan appointee, explained why he orally kept Cenk Uygur off the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary when the case was argued.  Here is the 17-page decision in Uygur v South Carolina, 3:23cv-6879.

Uygur, who was born in Turkey, had argued that the Fourteenth Amendment, Equal Protecdtion Clause, had silently repealed the Provision of Article II that requires presidents to be “natural born.”  Thanks to Electionlawblog for this news.

On January 22, David Scanlan, New Hampshire Secretary of State, told Andrew Volinsky that election officials will tally write-in votes for “ceasefire” in both the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries.  Volinsky wrote a letter to the editor of the Concord Monitor on December 13, 2023, which was printed.  He says he is so eager for a ceasefire in Gaza that he intends to “vote” for it.

The letter has received a lot of attention and now there is a website urging New Hampshire voters to write-in “ceasefire” for president on primary day, January 23.

New Hampshire is one of the few states that permits write-in votes and doesn’t have a declaration of candidacy procedure for write-ins.  Traditionally, the state tallies write-ins for candidates who receive a fairly significant number of votes, whether they are running or not.  For instance, the state customarily tallies the number of Republican write-ins for prominent Democratic candidates running for president in the Democratic primary, and vice versa.

On January 19, the Kansas Secretary of State announced that four candidates had filed for the Republican presidential primary, and also four had filed for the Democratic presidential primary.  Candidates needed a $10,000 filing fee to get on the ballot.

Republicans are Ryan Binkley, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Donald Trump.

Democrats are Joe Biden, Jason Palmer, Dean Phillips, and Marianne Williamson.

The primary is March 19.