COVID-Related Election Litigation Tracker

Case Details

This database consolidates and tracks litigation concerning the effect of the pandemic on election law. The purpose of this tool is to provide an interactive list of relevant cases that can be searched by issue, court, status, and jurisdiction.

Case Details

 

Hawkins v. Ziriax

Closed. Settled and/or Withdrawn (Voluntary Dismissal)

Hawkins v. Ziriax, No. 5:20-cv-00687 (W.D. Okla.)

  Case Summary Green Party nominee for President and registered voters in the State of Oklahoma brought an action against the Oklahoma State Election Board seeking: (i) a declaratory judgment that certain Oklahoma statutes (Okla. Stat. tit. 26 Sec. 5-112 and 10-101.1) (the "Oklahoma Election Statutes") are unconstitutional in that they violate plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and (ii) injunctive relief prohibiting enforcement of the Oklahoma Election Statutes. Specifically, plaintiffs alleged that the Oklahoma Election Statutes are unlawful, discriminatory, unequal, and capricious in the context of Presidential candidates who are nominees of political parties not recognized in the State of Oklahoma (e.g., the Green Party) and who are seeking inclusion on the general election ballot because the statutes: (a) require candidates of unrecognized parties to comply with a petition signature deadline far in advance of the deadlines for recognized political parties and require an onerous threshold number of signatories, which are exacerbated by Oklahoma’s ban on write-on voting and COVID and (b) provide an alternative means of appearing on the ballot by paying a filing fee of $35,000, which is far greater than the $2,000 filing fee required for non-presidential statewide federal offices.
Filed 07/15/2020
State Oklahoma
Type of Court Federal
Circuit Tenth Circuit
Status Closed. Settled and/or Withdrawn (Voluntary Dismissal)
Last Updated 10/22/2020
Issue Tag(s) Candidate Signature Requirement (Threshold Number, Deadline/Time to Collect)
Other
Excessive filing fee to appear on ballot
Complaint(s) 07/15/2020: Complaint filed.
Dispositive Ruling(s) 10/01/2020: Other
Creative Commons License  Covid-Related Election Litigation Tracker by the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project – Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.