On January 2, the Colorado Secretary of State asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Anderson v Griswold, the Trump ballot access case. The Secretary of State is ostensibly neutral on some of the issues in the case, but she is not neutral on the question of whether the Republican Party’s freedom of association rights were violated by removing Trump from the ballot. She argues that a party has no right to have an ineligible candidate placed on its primary ballot. Here is her filing.
On January 2, former President Donald Trump appealed the Secretary of State’s decision that keeps him off the Maine Republican presidential primary ballot. The case is now in the Superior Court for Kennebec County.
On January 2, the Colorado voters who sued in state court to keep Donald Trump off the Republican presidential primary ballot filed their response in the U.S. Supreme Court. See it here.
Generally, when the winners in the court below address the U.S. Supreme Court before the Court has accepted the appeal, the winners in the court below ask the U.S. Supreme Court not to hear the case. But in this instance, the winners in the court below do want the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. They request that the Court decide by January 5 whether to take the case. And they say that if the Court takes the case, they want the Court to decide the case on or before February 11.
On December 29, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema, a Clinton appointee, issued an opinion in Perry-Bey v Trump, e.d., 1:23cv-1165. This is a lawsuit filed by some Virginia voters to keep former President Donald Trump off all Virginia ballots. She ruled that the plaintiffs don’t have standing. Here is the opinion.
January 2, 2024, is the deadline for a group to qualify as a political party in Maine. A group or party needs 5,000 registered members to obtain or keep qualified status. Already the Democratic, Republican, Green Independent, and No Labels Party had enough registrants. The Libertarian Party’s recent new registrations give it approximately 5,400 registered members, so it is likely it is also back on the ballot.
A strong case can be made that the deadline is unconstitutionally early, based on a 2016 U.S. District Court decision that struck down the former December (of the year before the election) deadline. In response to the lawsuit decision, the legislature only improved the deadline by a few weeks, which probably still isn’t constitutional, although there is probably no group that was seriously planning to qualify as a party anyway, other than the parties that appear to have qualified.
