AL JAEGER

This strategy playing nice with lunatics will eventually blow up and start costing Republicans elections.

"What is happening nationwide is happening here too," Secretary of State Al Jaeger says. "We’re working through it all the best we can."

Voters will now have on their ballots a measure that is only there because the political operatives behind it could afford to pay to have their signatures collected, and then pay for a platoon of lawyers to paper over the myriad problems with how those signatures were collected.

In a unanimous decision, the court found that Secretary of State Al Jaeger misapplied the law in disqualifying thousands of signatures in support of a ballot measure to implement term limits.

Heitkamp accuses Burgum of having "abused his power as governor of North Dakota by funding the Dakota Leadership PAC," a committee formed by Burgum to support his preferred legislative candidates. Burgum's "intention was not to help every single legislator, his intention was to only help those that would further his personal agenda," Heitkamp argued in the petition.

As the campaign behind a ballot measure to implement term limits in North Dakota argues in court that their signatures are valid, one of the petitioners they hired to gather those signatures just saw petitions in support of his independent candidacy for secretary of state tossed.

The judge's findings of fact found "credible facts" supporting Secretary of State Al Jaeger's determination to toss out thousands of petition signatures, including some violating a pay-per-signature ban.

The text messages are related to the filing of a business's annual report with the state.

David Owen, the chairman of the measure campaign, told me today that they feel they have at least 21,400 signatures, and probably more as additional completed measures flow into organizers over the weekend.