On July 19, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition filed a federal lawsuit to force the state of Florida to help ex-felons know if they are eligible to register to vote. Florida Rights Restoration Coalition v DeSantis, s.d., 1:23cv-22688. Here is the Complaint.

In November 2018, the voters of Florida passed Amendment 4, which allows ex-felons to register to vote. However, they cannot do so until they have paid all costs associated with their prior conviction, such as fines, court costs, and restitution. Seven percent of the adult citizens of Florida are ex-felons, approximately 1,400,000 people. In Florida they often have great difficulty knowing whether or not they have paid everything that is required.

In Alabama, by contrast, any ex-felon may ask the state for a determination of eligibility. Alabama responds within 44 days, and if Alabama determines the applicant is free to register, Alabama gives the applicant a voter eligibility card. Florida has no such service, but instead has an “election police unit” which seeks out ineligible voters and prosecutes them. The lawsuit asks the court to rule that due process requires the state to help individuals assess their eligibility.

The case was originally assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen M. Williams, an Obama appointee, but on July 21 she recused herself, and a new judge hasn’t been selected.

Atlantic staff writer Mark Leibovich has this article about the prospect of a Green Party presidential campaign in 2024. He assumes the Green Party will nominate Cornel West. His article carries all the cliches about the likelihood that West will cause Donald Trump to win the 2024 election.

He quotes David Axelrod as saying the Green Party in 2016 placed an “outsized role in tipping the election to Donald Trump”. He does not mention the 2016 exit polls which show that Jill Stein did not cause any state to be won by Donald Trump. He could easily have checked the exit polls, but apparently he did not. Even Michigan, the state with the smallest margin (among the states Trump carried) was not affected by the Stein vote. 25% of the Stein voters said they would have voted for Hillary Clinton if Stein had not been running, but 14% of the Stein voters said they would have voted for Donald Trump if Stein had not been running. The Michigan Trump margin was 10,704. Eleven percent of the Michigan Stein vote was only 5,661, not enough to tilt the outcome.

He quotes Matt Bennett as saying, “The idea that a third-party candidate won’t hurt the Democratic nominee is preposterous on its face.” Apparently neither Bennett nor Leibovich has ever read Samuel Lubeell’s 1951 book, “The Future of American Politics”, which showed after intensive research with election returns and poll data that the Progressive Party of 1948 helped the Democratic Party to elect President Harry Truman. The index for Lubell’s book, under “Henry Wallace” has this entry: “helps elect Truman, pages 210-211.”

On July 13, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 437, which requires qualified parties to notify the Secretary of State by 75 days before a presidential general election of the names of their presidential and vice-presidential nominees.

This is the type of law that is often administered in a discriminatory fashion. There have been times in some states when a major party failed to follow such a deadline, but state officials always excused these lapses. For example, in 1964, the Iowa Democratic Party forgot to certify Lyndon Johnson’s name in time, but the Secretary of State put him on the ballot anyway. Major parties have similarly sometimes missed these types of deadline in Indiana, Texas, and Florida, but always there were no consequences.

But when minor parties or independent candidates miss these deadlines, usually the state enforces the law. In 1996 the Arizona Libertarian Party missed a deadline, and the Secrertary of State refused to put Harry Browne on the ballot. But a state court reversed the action of the Secretary of State and put Browne on.