Articles by Richard Winger

UPDATE: An important court case that could change the way the court views partisanship in the courtroom will be heading to the Supreme Court on March 25th. At stake is whether party affiliation, when it comes to judges, can be a criterion for the who gets elected. Read the following update following the lower court's decision originally published by Richard Winger in Ballot Access News. On December 6, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Carney v Adams, 19-309, a Delaware case. The State Const...

On February 27, the South Dakota Senate unanimously passed HB 1012. The bill is now on its way to the governor. No legislator in either house voted against this bill. It says that a party must meet the vote test every four years. Current law says it must pass the vote test every two years. The bill has an urgency clause so assuming it is signed by the governor, it will go into effect immediately. For many years the vote test only had to be met every four years, but could only be satisfied by th...

On January 17, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v Commonwealth, a partisan gerrymandering case challenging congressional redistricting in Pennsylvania. Here is a Pittsburgh Post Gazette news story about the hearing. Here is a Huffington Post story. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports: "Based on the tenor of their questions, a majority of the court, which has five Democrats and two Republicans, appeared open to the argument that Pennsylvania's congress...

Gary Johnson and Jill Stein still plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Johnson v. Commission on Presidential Debates, their case using federal anti-trust law to attack the exclusionary policy of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Their cert petition was originally due at the end of November, but the Court has granted an extension to file. The cert petition is now due December 27. Editor's note: This update originally published on Ballot Access News, and has been republished on IVN wi...

On Monday, Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap approved the petition form for supporters of ranked choice voting to use, to repeal the anti-ranked-choice bill that the legislature passed last month. See this story. The referendum petition needs 61,123 valid signatures by early February 2018. If the petition succeeds, the law passed last month is suspended, and the state will be obliged to use ranked choice voting for the June 2018 primary for all federal and state office. Thanks to Michael Ch...

On November 3, Justice Samuel Alito refused a request by Pennsylvania state officials to delay a trial in League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. That case, filed in Commonwealth Court, seeks a ruling that Pennsylvania’s U.S. House district boundaries are an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The state government wanted to suspend the trial that is set for December. The state government said in case the U.S. Supreme Court later rules in the Wisconsin case that...

Kansas businessman Scott Morgan has announced that he is hoping to organize a new party, for Kansas, to be called “Party of the Center.” He will try to get it on the 2018 ballot. From Morgan's announcement: This is hard to write but I think we shouldn’t hang out together anymore. I’d like to say it’s not you, it’s me. But I kind of think it is you. I know that’s harsh but you’ve changed and I just feel we’re going in different directions.I can’t think this is a big surprise. You actually asked...

Gary Johnson and Jill Stein plan to file a cert petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on October 26 in Johnson v. Commission on Presidential Debates. On the same day, Johnson will hold a rally on the steps of the Court. This case should not be confused with Level the Playing Field v FEC, which is still in U.S. District Court. Both cases challenge the presidential debate exclusion, but the two cases depend on different legal theories. Editor's note: This update originally published on Ballot Acc...

According to an article written by Our American Initiative, and published on The Jack News, the web page of the Commission on Presidential Debates no longer lists the sponsors of the debates. That is, the web page doesn’t list any corporations that contributed the money for the 2016 general election debates, even though that same web page had done so in past presidential election years. From the OAI article: "The organization’s web page lists the names of seven sponsors or the 2012 debates, ei...