Resource: Alliance Party v. D.C. Bd. of Elections

Plaintiffs are a third party and that third party's candidate for president seek a bar to the D.C. deadline for filing election petitions. D.C. lowered its signature requirements initially for all candidates for office other than those running as independent or third party candidates for president or vice president. The day after the deadline for filing passed, D.C. announced that requirements were lower for those signatures as well. Plaintiffs claim that had they been given sufficient notice they would have collected the required signatures. They claim violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses, as well as the First Amendment, and seek injunctive relief preventing the deadline from being enforced, moving the deadline to Sept 1., and preventing the board of elections from changing signature requirements in the future without two weeks notice. They further seek declaratory relief that the reduction in signatures required after the deadline violated their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.