[Lnc-business] IL Win & Proposed TX Lawsuit

[Oliver Hall]

We won our motion for preliminary injunction in the Illinois case 
yesterday.

The Court's opinion and order are attached.

LPIL is now entitled to automatic ballot access in 2020 for all offices 
for which it ran a candidate in either 2018 or 2016. That means the LP 
candidates are now on the ballot for President and U.S. Senate (I don't 
think the LP was on the ballot in Illinois for any other offices in the 
last two general elections, but if it was, it is automatically qualified 
for those offices in 2020 as well).

For all other offices, the signature requirement is 10 percent of the 
statutory requirement, and the filing deadline was extended to August 7. 
There is no notary requirement, candidates can submit photocopies of the 
petitions, and petitions can be signed electronically, collected via 
email, etc. I suspect that even with that substantial relief, this will 
be a very difficult requirement to meet, but the judge was not willing 
to go lower, or to require the Board of Elections to establish a 
procedure for voters to submit signatures directly via email or an 
online platform.

As for the proposed Texas litigation, I would need to know what harm the 
LNC has incurred as a result of the Texas governor's orders. Unless the 
LNC has sustained some direct, concrete injury, it would not have 
standing to join the case. LPTexas likely would, but even so, LPTexas 
needs to be able to assert some concrete injury. Additionally, we are 
already litigating in federal court on behalf of LPTexas, and the 
Governor agreed to allow LPTexas to postpone the date of its convention 
and/or to hold it online, so I would be very wary of any proposal that 
LPTexas join another lawsuit in state court to litigate related issues.

Thanks,

Oliver
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