Ballotpedia:How we handle court-ordered postponements of election dates and candidate filing deadlines
How does Ballotpedia respond to court orders postponing election dates or candidate filing deadlines?
In the event that a court postpones an election date or candidate filing deadline, Ballotpedia adheres to the following guidelines when making updates:
- If a trial-level state court orders the postponement, Ballotpedia will refrain from making updates until that order is affirmed by an intermediate appellate court or the state's court of last resort.
- Ballotpedia will update an election date or candidate filing deadline if a state-level intermediate appellate court, state court of last resort, or any federal court orders a change.
Why do we treat the orders of trial-level state courts differently than the orders of higher courts and federal courts?
The postponement orders of trial-level state courts are often subject to reversal by higher courts.These reversals can cause confusion. A hypothetical illustrates the problem.
- In State A, a trial court orders the postponement of an election, scheduled for June 14 to July 5. Assume that Ballotpedia makes immediate updates to reflect this postponement. Assume also that, three days later, an intermediate appellate court reverses the postponement order. We would then revert our updates. However, readers who viewed our content during the three-day interim might mistakenly believe that the election remains postponed.
In order to avoid such confusion, we make updates only when we are reasonably certain that the postponement order will stand.
Why not treat federal district courts and intermediate appellate courts the same as trial-level state courts?
It might be argued that a similar approach should be taken when federal district courts and intermediate appellate courts postpone election dates or candidate filing deadlines, the reasoning being that the orders of such courts can be reversed by higher courts. While it is true that such reversals are possible, such reversals are considerably less likely than reversals of postponements by trial-level state courts. Given the relative stability of federal district court and intermediate appellate court postponements, and in the interest of providing our readers with the most recent and most reliable information possible, we consider such postponements more likely to be final.
