The State of Michigan indicted all 16 electors of then-President Donald Trump in 2020 for signing forms indicating that Trump won Michigan’s electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election.
Here is the link to the story.
Thanks to Thomas Jones for the “heads up.”
This letter from Oliver Hall, the Founder, Executive Director & General Counsel of the Center for Competitive Democracy, to Harvard Law University Law Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, as published in the July/August 2023 edition of Capitol Hill Citizen:
David Korn, writing for Mother Jones, asserts that No Labels ought to be revealing its donors. He says that the basis for No Labels’ refusal to disclose its donors so far is because No Labels claims it is not a political party. Korn then mentions that No Labels is a ballot-qualified party in several states.
The real reason No Labels need not reveal its donors so far is because it has never had any candidates. The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, ruled in Unity ’08 v FEC, 596 F.3d 861 (2010), that a similar group, Unity ’08, need not reveal its donors, even though it was working to qualify for the ballot as a party, because “Unity08’s proposed method of generating nominees was such that neither dnoors nor candidates would know at the time of the donations which candidate would ultimately benefit from the group’s convention.”
The New York Daily News has a July 17 editorial calling on New York Governor Kathy Hochul to veto A7690, the bill that passed last month and which sets an April presidential primary. The editorial is behind a pay wall, but it says the legislature should pick one date for both the presidential primary and the primary for other office. The primary for non-presidential office is in June. The News says either an April primary for all offices would work, or a June primary for all offices would work, but that it is bad policy to have two primary dates in the same year, so close together in time.
The legislature still hasn’t sent A7690 to the Governor. For some reason there is often a long delay between a bill passing the New York legislature, and the legislature sending it to the Governor. The bill passed June 8.
On June 27, 2023, U.S. District Court Judge James L. Graham denied relief to Sarah Thomas Hoover, a Republican who was kept off the ballot in November 2022 even though she was her party’s nominee for Trumbull County Court of Common Pleas. Koover v LaRose, s.d., 2:22cv-3468.
She had run in the May 2022 Republican primary for a different judicial position. Later, the Common Pleas seat became vacant due to the resignation of the incumbent. In such special election situations, Ohio law lets parties choose a nominee without the need for a primary. The Republican Party chose her as its nominee, but because she had run for a different position earlier that year, the Board of Elections and the Secretary of State kept her off the ballot. Therefore the Democratic Party nominee was the only candidate listed on the November ballot.
Judge Graham said that the “sore loser” law is constitutional in general. He wrote that if the plaintiff had filed an “as applied” claim, she might have won the lawsuit. He said the justifications for the “sore loser” law are not peruasive in a sitution like this. He said, “The unusual situation where a primary election loser desires election to since-vacated office is unlikely to confuse voters or cause a substantial increase of work for county board of elections.” But apparently her briefs made a general attack on the sore loser law instead of an “as applied” challenge, so she lost the lawsuit. Here is the eight-page opinion.
