◼ Taegan Goddard provides the obligatory zinger about a noted fan of states rights and the Tenth Amendment asking a federal judge to overrule Virginia’s preferences on ballot access. - HotAir
◼ Here’s the complaint, which is mercifully short. One interesting bit comes in paragraph 18, which says Perry submitted “over 6,000 petition signatures from qualified Virginia voters.” According to the Virginia GOP, ◼ he submitted more than 11,900 signatures total, which I guess means … only slightly more than half were from qualified voters? Good lord. The other important part, which you should take two minutes to read, is Count 1 spanning paragraphs 24 through 28. He’s arguing that Virginia’s requirement that petition circulators all be residents of the state who are either registered to vote or eligible to be registered imposes a too-heavy burden on his right to engage in political speech and therefore violates the First Amendment. Is he right? Well, here’s the leading Supreme Court precedent that he cites, which is also mercifully short. Skip down to section III and take two more minutes to read that. The question for the Court in that case was ever so slightly different: Colorado law allowed only currently registered voters to be petition circulators, not people who were eligible but who hadn’t registered yet. It was slightly more restrictive than Virginia’s system, in other words — and the Court found that it did in fact violate the First Amendment.
◼ UPDATE: Perry Loses Bid to Stop Virginia Ballots - Bloomberg
Texas Governor Rick Perry failed in his bid to stop Virginia election officials from printing or distributing primary ballots without his name on them.
A federal judge in Richmond said today that he wouldn’t stop the printing before the next hearing in the case, scheduled for Jan. 13. He didn’t rule on the merits of Perry’s challenge.
