Justia Election Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff, the Republican Party of Connecticut, brought a declaratory judgment action in which it sought a determination that, because its candidate for the office of governor in the 2010 election received the highest number of votes under the designation of the Republican Party line on the ballot, Defendant, the secretary of the state, was required to list the candidates of the Republican Party first on the ballots for the 2010 election pursuant to Conn. Gen. Stat. 9-249a(a). The trial court granted the joint request of the parties to reserve questions regarding the statute for the Supreme Court. The Court answered, (1) Plaintiff had an available administrative remedy in the present case, which it exhausted; (2) Plaintiff's complaint was not barred by sovereign immunity; and (3) section 9-249a requires that the Plaintiff's candidates for office be placed on the first line of the ballots for the November 6, 2012 election. View "Republican Party of Conn. v. Merrill" on Justia Law

Voter Verified’s patent, issued in 2008 and claiming priority from an application filed in 2000, patent discloses and claims automated systems and methods for voting in an election. It features a self-verification procedure by which machine and human error may be detected and corrected before the ballot is submitted by the voter for tabulation. The voter enters a vote into an electronic voting station, which temporarily records the voter’s input in digital storage and generates a corresponding printed ballot. That printed ballot is then checked for accuracy, either by visual inspection by the voter or by a computerized scanning mechanism capable of comparing the face of the printed ballot with the vote data represented in the station’s temporary storage. Only ballots deemed consistent with the voter’s intended or recorded input are accepted for final tabulation. The district court held that claims 1-93 were not infringed, that claims 49 and 94 were invalid, and that other claims were not invalid. The Federal Circuit affirmed, noting that several of the steps involved in the alleged infringement require action by the voter. View "Voter Verified, Inc. v. Premier Election Solutions, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff was an otherwise qualified voter in Puerto Rico who was removed from the voter registration roll because she did not vote in the 2008 general election. Plaintiff filed suit on September 12, 2012, seeking a preliminary injunction to redress that removal. The injunction would have required the government to reinstate more than 300,000 voters to the registration roll in time for the federal election on November 6, 2012. The district court denied Plaintiff's request. The First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's denial of the preliminary injunction, holding that the record and the parties' arguments failed to demonstrate that such extraordinary relief could be granted only weeks before the election without creating uncertainty and confusion in the Puerto Rico electoral process. Although the Court recognized the importance of Plaintiff's claims in this case, the Court declined to jeopardize the electoral process as a whole by acting precipitously on evolving claims that had not yet been adequately analyzed or developed by Plaintiff. View "Colon-Marrero v. Conty-Perez" on Justia Law

The Sixth Circuit granted Ohio a stay of the district court’s October 26 order granting a preliminary injunction that requires the state to count provisional ballots cast in the wrong polling place due to poll-worker error (wrong-place/wrong-precinct ballots) in the November election. The court previously affirmed an order that Ohio count right-place/wrong-precinct provisional ballots caused by poll-worker error. Plaintiffs failed to show strong likelihood of success on the merits of constitutional claims concerning wrong-place/wrong-precinct ballots. The salient feature of the right-place/ wrong-precinct problem was disenfranchisement, by worker error, of voters who arrive at the correct place, a situation caused by Ohio’s system of multi-precinct polling places. Though voters rely on workers to direct them to the proper precinct in the polling place, they are not as dependent in identifying their correct polling place. Ohio law requires officials to provide notice of where they are eligible to vote; information is easily accessible. There is sparse evidence of workers sending voters to the wrong polling location. The state has a legitimate interest in maintaining its precinct-based voting system; there is a strong public interest that militates against changing the rules during early voting. The injunction would interfere with orderly election administration and cause confusion among poll workers and voters. View "Serv. Emps. Int'l Union Local 1 v. Husted" on Justia Law

The Washington constitution limits municipal indebtedness to protect taxpayers from legislative and voter improvidence. The issue before the Supreme Court centered on whether the city of Wenatchee (City) would exceed its debt limit by entering into a "contingent loan agreement" (CLA) with appellant Greater Wenatchee Regional Events Center Public Facilities District (District) to help the District finance a regional events center. The District argued that the CLA was not subject to the City's debt limit because it created a "contingent" liability, triggered only if the District is unable to make payments on the District's bonds. Upon review, the Supreme Court rejected this argument because the City was unconditionally obligated to service the District's debt if the District could not and because the risk of loss fell upon the City and its taxpayers: "[o]ur decision accordingly places the approval of the CLA in the hands of the voters." View "In re Bond Issuance of Greater Wenatchee Reg'l Events Ctr." on Justia Law

This was the latest in a series of opinions by the Court of Appeals involving the constitutional provision and the implementing legislation authorizing a limited number of slot machines at specified Maryland facilities, including facilities in the area of Anne Arundel County (County). A County zoning ordinance authorized slot machines in certain areas of the County. The circuit court determined that the ordinance was not subject to referendum under the County charter. On appeal, the Court of Appeals (1) held the circuit court's judgment was appealable, as (i) the Legislature no no intention of applying the non-appealability principle of Md. Code Ann. Cts. & Jud. Proc. 12-302(a) to cases under the Election Article, and (ii) where the Election Article authorizes judicial review but is silent regarding an appeal, Md. Code Ann. Cts. & Jud. Proc.12-301 authorizes an appeal; and (2) reversed the circuit court's judgment and remanded with instructions to order that the ordinance be placed on the ballot at the general election in accordance with the referendum provisions of the County charter, holding that the ordinance was simply a local ordinance re-zoning an area, and as such, it was not exempt from a referendum. View "Citizens Against Slots At The Mall v. PPE Casino Resorts Md., LLC" on Justia Law

The Stanford Defendants brought this case under the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (TUFTA), Tex. Bus. & Com. Code 24.001 et seq., to recover approximately $1.6 million in political contributions made to various political committees by the Stanford Defendants between 2000 and 2008. Because the court concluded that (1) the Receiver could stand in the shoes of the creditors of the Stanford Defendants, (2) the Receiver's TUFTA claims were brought within one year after the transfers were or reasonably could have been discovered by the claimant, and (3) they were not preempted, the court rejected the Committees' arguments and affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Janvey v. Democratic Senatorial Campaign, et al" on Justia Law

Steven Zaiser, as Chairman of the Sponsoring Committee for the Statutory Initiative Relating to the North Dakota Medical Marijuana Act, asked the Supreme Court to order Secretary of State Alvin Jaeger to place an initiated measure for the Medical Marijuana Act on the November 6, 2012, general election ballot after the Secretary of State rejected 7,559 signatures on circulated petitions and decided the measure did not qualify for placement on that ballot. The Sponsoring Committee claimed that although the submitted petitions included some elector signatures forged by petition circulators, the petitions contained sufficient valid signatures to place the measure on the ballot. Because of time constraints for placing the measure on the November 6, 2012, ballot, the Supreme Court issued a dispositive order on September 19, 2012, denying the Sponsoring Committee's request for relief and stating a written opinion would be filed at a later date. Because the circulators' petitions at issue in this case included signatures forged by the circulators in violation of a mandatory constitutional provision, the Secretary of State correctly rejected those petitions in calculating the number of elector signatures necessary to place the measure on the November 6, 2012, ballot and correctly determined the remaining petitions contained insufficient signatures to place the measure on that ballot. View "Zaiser v. Jaeger" on Justia Law

Following the passage of Maryland's latest congressional redistricting law, SB 1, Intervenor employed a website-based initiative to gather the signatures necessary to petition SB 1 to referendum on the general election ballot in November 2012. The State Board of Elections certified the petition for referendum after determining that Intervenor had gathered the required number of valid signatures. Petitioners subsequently challenged the State's Board's certification of the petition on the grounds that Intervenor failed to submit a sufficient number of valid signatures, objecting to two classes of signatures validated by the State Board. The circuit court affirmed. The Supreme Court also affirmed, holding (1) petition signatures obtained through the use of a third-party website do not violate the statutory requirement that an individual "include" or "provide" his or her identifying information; and (2) an individual can "self-circulate" a petition by signing both as the voter and as the circulator. View "Whitley v. State Bd. of Elections" on Justia Law

This was an appeal from a judgment granting a writ of mandamus to compel Appellees, the county board of commissioners and the county board of elections, to hold a special election before January 1, 2013 to elect a judge for the newly created county municipal court for a one-year term in 2013. The court of appeals granted the writ to compel the special election. The Supreme Court (1) reversed the judgment of the court of appeals with regard to granting the special election and instead held that Appellants established their entitlement to a writ of mandamus to compel Appellees to conduct the November 6, 2012 election for the two part-time judgeships for the county court; (2) granted a writ of mandamus to compel the board of elections to accept the filed petitions and conduct the November 6, 2012 election for the judges of the county court; and (3) affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals insofar as the court held that the pertinent legislation was unconstitutional insofar as it appointed judges of the county court to the newly created county municipal court for 2013. View "State ex rel. Whitehead v. Sandusky County Bd. of Comm'rs" on Justia Law