On June 29, John F. Wood, a centrist independent who is assured of substantial financial backing, announced for the Missouri U.S. Senate seat as an independent candidate. He needs 10,000 signatures by August 1.
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On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to allow Louisiana to keep the U.S. House districts the legislature had drawn earlier this year. Ardoin v Robinson, A21814. The Court also accepted the case for a full review in the next session.
This excellent Stateline article explains many reasons why petitioning has become more difficult in the last few years. Thanks to Eric Wong for the link.
On June 24, Republican candidate James Judge, running for U.S. House, was removed from the primary ballot for filing the wrong form. There are separate forms for federal candidates, versus state and local candidates, to affirm that they support the U.S. Constitution, although the wording of the oath is identical for both. Judge used the state/local form. He filed a week before the deadline and the state accepted his paperwork, without telling him until it was too late that he had used the wrong form.
On June 27, he filed a lawsuit in state court to reverse the decision. See this story.
On June 24, a Connecticut state trial court refused to put Muad Hrezi on the Democratic primary ballot as a candidate for the U.S. House. He needed 3,833 signatures and submitted 4,950, but he didn’t have enough valid signatures. The law required all the signatures to be collected between April 26 and June 7. Hrezi argued that he would have qualified if he had received the blank petition forms on April 26 instead of two days later. But the judge said even though the e-mailed blank forms were not sent until April 28, Hrezi could always have come into the clerk’s office and picked them up physically on April 26. Hrezi v Merrill, Superior Court, Hartford, HHD-cv22-6156703-5. Here is the opinion.