Law Professor Derek Muller has an interesting article about Minnesota’s history of printing the names of presidential and vice-presidential candidates’ names on general election ballots, even though those candidates were under age 35 and the state was aware of that.
As noted earlier, some Colorado voters filed a lawsuit in state court on September 6, seeking to bar Former President Donald Trump from Colorado ballots. On September 7, attorneys for Trump transferred the case to federal court. On September 8, attorneys for the plaintiffs said the case should go back to state court.
On September 12, U.S. District Court Judge Philip A. Brimmer sent the case back to state court, for technical reasons. Here is his order. Anderson v Griswold, 1:23cv-2291.
On August 31, two Virginia voters filed a federal lawsuit to keep former President Donald Trump off the Virginia Republican presidential primary ballot. Perry-Bey v Trump, e.d., 1:23cv-1165. Like similar lawsuits in other states, the case is based on Section Three of the 14th amendment.
Here is the Complaint. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Magistrate Ivan D. Davis.
On September 11, 2023, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called a Special Election to fill a vacant seat in the Minnesota House due to a member’s resignation. The date of the Special Election is Tuesday, December 5. The date of the primaries of the Democratic (Democratic-Farmer-Labor in Minnesota) and Republican primaries is November 16.
Yet, the Governor mandated the petitioning period for minor parties and Independent candidates to run from Wednesday, September 13 to Tuesday, September 19 at 5PM, with a requirement of 500 valid signatures of registered voters from within District 52B.
Minnesota’s harsh ballot access laws usually require such a petition drive to be completed within two weeks, but the Governor arbitrarily trimmed the petitioning period by half for this Special Election.
Also, given that this State House district is in the Minneapolis metropolitan area, petitioning will be much more difficult, as it will have to be conducted door-to-door, according to Cara Schulz of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota. Petitioning at public locations in this situation will cause a low validity rate due to a likely high percentage of out-of-district voters signing the petition because of widespread voter ignorance of the State House district of their residence.
Release_ LPMN on Special Election in House District 52B is a press release on this matter from the Libertarian Party of Minnesota.
The State of Illinois recently created a Ranked Choice Voting Task Force to study possible implementation of Ranked Choice Voting, with an emphasis on possible adoption for presidential primaries in 2028. A final report is due by March 1, 2024, but, as of today, according to this link, it appears that 16 of the 20 members of the Task Force have yet to be appointed.
