On June 12, the U.S. District Court postponed the pretrial conference in Libertarian National Committee v Dean, e.d., 2:23cv-155. This is the case in which the Libertarian National Committee is suing Robert Klor Dean and his Tidewater Libertarian Party over trademark law. The conference had been set for June 15, but now it is postponed. No new date has been set yet. UPDATE: the conference is now set for June 22.
Missouri Agrees, a campaign of the organization Show Me Integrity (SMI), is now circulating a petition that would place an initiative on the November 2024 ballot in that state to mandate Approval Voting for all federal, state, and local elections. A volunteer petitioning effort is underway, but SMI thinks it needs to start a paid petition drive by July 1 for this initiative petition to succeed. The estimated cost of that is $1.2 million. SMI has located a potential donor who had pledged $600,000, with the proviso that the other $600,000 be raised first.
This is the Missouri Agrees website:
https://www.missouriagrees.org
SMI will be holding a Zoom call on this effort on Thursday, June 15, from 2:00 to 2:20PM Central Time. SMI would like interested parties to RSVP at this link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvcO2rqjkrGtzh8HJEOP2eOe0OZiWjjX4h#/registration
On June 13, on electionlawblog.org, Ned Foley, Professor of Law at Ohio State, posted a paper forthcoming in the Kentucky Law Journal titled “Self-Districting: The Ultimate Antidote to Gerrymandering.” In the article, he reminds us that districts do not have to be geography-based. A district can be a subset of a state’s entire population and can be formed by like-minded individuals who can voluntarily organize and form a political district that is not necessarily geographically continuous. A person’s neighbors may be in his political district or be in a different district in a self-districting plan. While this would not affect certain elections (e.g., the single US House race in Wyoming), in elections with many seats to be decided (e.g., US House elections in California or the houses of all state legislatures), individuals in currently unelectable political minorities (e.g., Libertarians and Greens) could band together to elected representatives in single district elections and win seats in legislatures. The self-districting aspect of this plan would do away with state legislatures’ power to draw political district boundaries.
Here is Mr. Foley’s current paper on this topic:
This Politico story says that leaders of No Labels have given some indication that No Labels won’t enter the 2024 presidential race if the Republican Party nominates someone other than Donald Trump.
The Libertarian Party’s Ballot Access Committee held a meeting on Monday, June 12, 2023. From that meeting come these petition drive updates:
Arkansas: 3,740 total signatures to date, 1,900 of which have been gathered by volunteers. 10,000 valid signatures are needed, with a deadline of February 13, 2024.
North Dakota: The petition drive is getting underway with a volunteer effort to date. No reported numbers yet.
Ohio: The LP will be doing an Independent petition for its presidential ticket, needing 5,000 valid signatures, with an August 2024 deadline. A stand-in presidential ticket has been selected and the selection of presidential electors is nearing completion. When that is done, the petition drive will start.
