On September 28, a lower New Hampshire state court invalidated the Secretary of State’s plan for a fairer order of candidates on the ballot. Back in August, the State Supreme Court had ruled that all candidates must have an equal chance for the best spot on the ballot. This affected the order of party columns, and it also affected the order of candidates’ names, in multi-winner districts (some New Hampshire state house districts elect as many as 9 representatives).

Since the New Hampshire legislature did not pass any new law on the subject of ballot order, the Secretary of State had proposed that the old alphabetical listing should be altered, in this fashion: he would randomly choose a letter of the alphabet. For this year’s general election, he chose “k”. Then, he proposed that all candidates with a surname starting with “k” should be listed first, but after that, the normal alphabet would again prevail, so that candidates with surnames starting with “a” would follow the candidates whose surnames start with “k”.

The lower state court ruling said that plan isn’t good enough, because it still leaves candidates with surnames at the beginning of the alphabet better off than candidates with surnames at the end.

On September 29, Florida Congressman Mark Foley resigned his seat and withdrew as a candidate for re-election, even though he had won the Florida Republican primary on September 5. Under Florida law, his name will remain on the November ballot. However, if the voters elect him, the actual winner will be the individual (whose name was not on the ballot) chosen by the Republican Party’s district 16 committee. A Republican state legislator, Joe Negron, has already declared he wants that nomination.

Pennsylvania courts are mulling over three issues, all related to whether the Green Party statewide nominees will be on this year’s ballot: (1) the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will soon decide how many valid signatures are needed this year for statewide office; (2) the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was asked to decide (on September 29) whether the petition-checking process this year was valid, and whether costs should be assessed against the Greens if they were; (3) the US Court of Appeals is still considering whether to rehear the constitutional ballot access case; that rehearing has been pending since Sep. 5.