Alabama lets the two major parties have extraordinary power over whether to let members of those parties onto primary ballots or not. State law lets the major parties exclude candidates who have been “disloyal” (i.e., anyone who ran as a write-in candidate, or as an independent, or as a member of another party, during the preceding four years). At least 4 such individuals were blocked from 2004 primaries.

On July 12, the Alabama Supreme Court refused to hear another of these lawsuits, filed by an excluded candidate. The lower court had refused to put Steve Small on the Democratic Party ballot as a candidate for Jefferson County Commission, because 4 years ago he had run as a write-in candidate for the same office in the general election. Small v Turnham, 1051061. The Court said the case is moot because the primary was already held. Small had charged that the Democratic Party does not enforce its rule uniformly. Alabama doesn’t have a procedure for a write-in candidate to file as a “declared” write-in candidate anyway; there is no official record that Small ran as a write-in in 2002.

Last week, Nebraska voters who desire to cast a write-in vote for Tom Osborne for Governor this November filed a lawsuit against the state’s “sore loser” law for write-in candidates. Rodgers v Heineman, 33-06-0018.

Tom Osborne lost the Republican primary for Governor last May, but some of his die-hard supporters still want to organize a write-in campaign for him in November (even though Osborne himself says he isn’t interested). Nebraska law requires write-in candidates to file a declaration of write-in candidacy if they want their write-ins counted, and also bars individuals who lost a partisan primary from filing such a write-in declaration.

However, in 1912, the Nebraska Supreme Court said, “The right of the voter to vote at the general election for whom he pleases cannot be limited”, and no subsequent decision of that court has reversed that ruling.

On July 11, Connecticut state Representative Diana Urban began to circulate a petition to place herself on the ballot as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate. Her action may or may not be in reaction to news that the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Alan Schlesinger, used a fake identity while gambling in a large Connecticut casino during the 1990’s. Schlesinger is also a Connecticut state representative.