On July 14, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman refused to let the Wisconsin legislature intervene in the lawsuit Americans for Citizen Voting PAC v Wolfe, e.d., 2:26cv-786. This is the lawsuit over Wisconsin’s new ban on out-of-state petitioners. Here is the ruling, which says that it would violate the Wisconsin Constitution to let the legislature intervene, given that the Wisconsin Elections Commission is fully capable of defending the ban.
On July 17, U.s. District Court Matthew Kacsmaryk refused to let Veterans for All Voters intervene in Hunt v State of Texas, n.d., 2:25cv-200. This is the lawsuit in which the Texas Republican Party argues that it has a right to a closed primary. Veterans for All Voters wanted to intervene in the case to support the existing open primary law. But the judge said that the Texas Secretary of State is already defending the law, so there is no need for interention. Veterans for All Voters had argued that the Secretary of State might leave her position soon, but the judge said that is speculative. The case is unusual because the Secretary of State is defending the existing open primary law, but the Texas Attorney General is on the side of the Republican Party and is refusing to defend the law.
This story says that Chicago alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez, who is an independent candidate for U.S. House in the Fourth District, will file a lawsuit in Illinois state courts to get on the ballot, if the Elections Board keeps him off the ballot.
He would probably have a better chance in federal court. The Illinois state courts are among the least favorable to ballot access, among the state courts of all fifty states. Illinois state courts kept the Harold Washington Party off the Cook County in 1990, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision. The state courts repeatedly upheld the full-slate law for new parties, but the federal courts invalidated that law in 2016. The state courts have invalidated all statewide initiative petitions since 1980.
Here is a newspaper story about the New Mexico Forward Party’s ballot access lawsuit.
The story is inaccurate when it says the party’s statewide nominees needed 7,123 signatures each. The law plainly says that they each needed 14,246 signatures.
This news story says the Lincoln Party, which successfully peetitioned to place one candidate on the Indiana ballot this year for Secretary of State, spent $780,000 to gather the signatures.
