The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to hear Libertarian Party of New York v. New York State Board of Elections, 22-893, at its September 26 conference. This is the case over the ballot access laws passed in 2020, which tripled the statewide independent petition signature requirement without expanding the six week petitioning period, and also made it far more difficult for a group to attain status as a qualified party based on election results.
On July 17, U.S. District Court Judge Steve C. Jones, an Obama appointee, issued a 109-page order in Pendergrass v Raffensperger, n.d., 1:21cv-05339. This is a case filed in 2021, challenging the boundaries of Georgia’s U.S. House district boundaries. Judge Jones ruled that the case cannot be settled without a trial. The date of the trial has not yet been set, but it will probably be three or four months in the future, perhaps more.
When the trial is over, the judge will rule on whether the existing districts are unconstitutional. If he rules against the state, then the legislature would need to draw up new districts, and that would probably be in early 2024.
Two other related cases argue that the legislative districts are also in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
This is good news for 2024 minor party and independent candidates for U.S. House and legislative districts in Georgia. Courts in the past have ruled that when Georgia redistricting has been delayed, the state must shrink the number of signatures required, proportionate to the amount of time lost. The Georgia petitioning period runs from January to July of even years.
The trial will be complicated because the law on districting relative to race is complicated. If one reads the order, one can understand how complicated these cases are. Most of the order relates to why the state’s brief for summary judgment should be denied. The part of the order explaining why the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment is also denied starts on page 74.
In 2020, Georgia elected eight Republicans and six Democrats to the U.S. House. But after the legislature redrew the districts in 2021, the state elected nine Republicans and five Democrats in 2022.
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.”
