On March 24, Carole Strayhorn, independent candidate for Governor of Texas, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Austin over some ballot access rules. The case was assigned to Judge Sam Sparks. Strayhorn v Williams, A06-ca205.

The lawsuit argues that the state should permit independent candidates to file supplemental petitions, after the first batch has been turned in. The lawsuit also argues that the state may not arbitrarily refuse to use the random sampling method that is already provided for in state law. For some reason, a few weeks ago, the Texas Secretary of State said he would not use random sampling this year for independent candidate petitions, and he also ruled that once signatures have been turned in, no more signatures will be accepted, even if the deadline lies in the future. There is no statutory authorization for such a rule.

On March 23, the 6th circuit refused to rehear Nader’s case against Ohio. The issue is Ohio’s law requiring candidate petition circulators to be registered voters. The District Court had refused to give Nader any relief, even though it said the restriction is unconstitutional, on the grounds that Nader’s petitioners had tried to fool officials on whether they were bona fide Ohio residents or not. Therefore, it refused to rule the law unconstitutional, even though it expressed the opinion that the law is unconstitutional. The 6th circuit, ruling after the election, had said the case is moot. That decision now stands, so someone else will need to file a lawsuit on the same point, but this time using out-of-state petitioners who freely admit that they are out-of-staters.

On March 20, Iowa elections officials announced that the only Democratic candidate for U.S. House, 2nd district, had failed to gather enough valid signatures to appear on the primary ballot. However, Iowa law lets a qualified party nominate someone by committee, in cases when the primary fails to produce a nominee, so no major consequences will follow. The candidate is David Loebsack, a college professor challenging the incumbent Republican member of Congress. Iowa ballot access for U.S. House candidates in primaries is severe. Candidates need signatures from 1% of that party’s last presidential or gubernatorial general election vote. Further, there is a county distribution requirement; the candidate needs 2% from each of half the counties in the district.

Iowa’s 2nd district has 15 counties, so Loebsack needed a certain number of signatures from 8 counties. But he was short in two of his needed 8 counties. He could probably have won a lawsuit against the county distribution requirement. All county distribution requirements that have been tested in court, for candidate or party ballot access, have been eliminated (except in Pennsylvania). In 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court said county distribution requirements are unconstitutional for statewide petitions, since they give more power to residents of low-population counties than high-population counties. The 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision Bush v Gore reinforced the old 1969 decision. Since Bush v Gore came out, several courts have even invalidated county distribution requirements for initiatives.