On September 21, Texas filed this brief in Collier v Howden, w.d., 1:26cv-1574. This is the lawsuit in which Michael Collier, an independent candidate for Lieutenant Governor, sued to overturn the law that said he needed 81,030 valid signatures to be collected in only 30 days. The Texas brief claims the lawsuit is moot. The brief doesn’t even mention the U.S. Supreme Court decision Moore v Ogilvie, which said that constitutional ballot access cases are not moot just because the election is over. Nor does the brief mention Kucinich v Texas Democratic Party, a 2009 decision of the Fifth Circuit which held that a Texas ballot access case brought by a candidate who had been denied a spot on a presidential primary ballot was not moot just because the primary was over.

This year, for the first time, Louisiana is holding closed primaries for U.S. Senate. The law converting U.S. Senate elections to closed primaries also requires independent candidates, and the nominees of all parties other than the Democratic and Republican parties to submit a petition to get on the November ballot. And the law says the petition is due in January. No one was able to comply with this petition requirement. Also, the law says registered members of the Republican and Democratic Parties can not sign the petition. A similar law once existed in Arizona but was declared unconstitutional in Campbell v Hull in 1999. There are no other precedents on that issue.

An independent candidate, Charles Carpenter, filed a pro se lawsuit against the requirements for independent candidates. Carpenter v Landry, m.d., 3:26cv-791. Even though ballots have been printed and therefore it is virtually impossible that the judge would order Carpenter to be placed on the ballot, the case is still pending. It is conceivable that Carpenter could win declaratory relief even if he can’t get on the ballot.