On December 22, California Assemblymember Vince Fong filed a lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court, seeking to win a ruling that he may be on the March 2024 Republican ballot as a candidate for U.S. House, 20th district. The Secretary of State ruled that he could not be on the ballot, even though he had the needed 40 valid signatures, because he had earlier filed to run for re-election for Assembly. When he did that, he did not know that incumbent U.S. House member Kevin McCarthy would not be running. See this story. The Secretary of State ruled that no one may file for two offices in the same election. Fong can’t withdraw from the Assembly race because California does not permit any candidate to withdraw. California is the only state that forbids withdrawal.

The case is Fong v Weber, 23WM-000137. It has a hearing on December 28 at 1:30 p.m. Here is the opening brief.

On December 21, a Maine state trial court upheld the decision of the Secretary of State that the petition to put Chris Christie on the Republican presidential primary ballot is invalid. Christie submitted 6,000 signatures to meet a requirement of 2,000, but he didn’t segregate them by towns. See this story. Thanks to Michael Drucker for this news.

UPDATE: this story is more detailed.

On December 22, the Arizona Secretary of State determined that the petition to qualify the Green Party is valid. The party needed 34,127 valid signatures, and it submitted 63,000. There were 45,127 valid signatures, for a validity rate of 72%. Thanks to Richard Grayson for this news.

The last time the Arizona Green Party successfully completed the petition was in 2014, but the 2014 petition wasn’t submitted by the deadline, so that petition was instead used to put the party on the ballot for 2016 and 2018. The party did not appear on the Arizona ballot in either 2020 nor 2022.