Here is a list of all known pending lawsuits in which a minor party or independent candidate is challenging the constitutionality of a state’s ballot access laws:
Alabama: a decision is expected at any time in Shugart v Chapman, pending in U.S. District Court. The issue is the number of signatures for independent candidates for U.S. House.
Connecticut: briefing is underway in Libertarian Party v Bysiewicz, over the inconsistent standards for checking ballot access petitions.
Georgia: a decision is expected any time in Coffield v Williams, pending in U.S. District Court. The issue is the number of signatures for independent candidates for U.S. House.
Hawaii: the 9th circuit has temporarily suspended Nader v Cronin to see if the legislature will alter any ballot access laws. The case will be resumed in September if the legislature has not acted. The issue is the number of signatures for an independent presidential candidate.
Idaho: Daien v Ysursa has been assigned to a federal magistrate. The issue is whether out-of-state circulators for independent candidates must be permitted.
Illinois: Stevo v Keith is on the U.S. Supreme Court’s next conference. The issue is the number of signatures for independent candidates for U.S. House.
Maine: briefing has just been completed in Libertarian Party of Maine v Dunlap, over the relationship between the deadline for submitting signatures to town clerks, and the deadline for submitting signatures to the Secretary of State’s office.
Massachusetts: briefing is underway in Barr v Galvin, over whether states must let unqualified parties use a stand-in presidential candidate.
Montana: briefing is underway in Kelly v Johnson, over the March petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates.
New Hampshire: briefing hasn’t begun yet in Libertarian Party of N.H. v Gardner, over presidential substitution.
North Carolina: in Libertarian Party of N.C. v State Bd. of Elections, in the State Appeals Court, a decision is likely this summer. The issue are ballot access laws for minor parties. In Greene v Bartlett, discovery is proceeding in U.S. District Court. The issue is the number of signatures for an independent candidate for U.S. House.
Oklahoma: a notice of appeal is about to be filed in the 10th circuit in Barr v Zeriax, the case over the number of signatures for independent presidential candidates.
Pennsylvania: the minor parties who filed Constitution Party of Pa. v Cortes are awaiting an answer to their complaint, in U.S. District Court. The case is only three weeks old. The issues are the state’s policy of charging candidates for the costs of removing them from the ballot, and the policy of not tallying write-in votes, and not counting them in some counties, and finally the state’s threshold (15% registration membership) for a party to be on the November ballot automatically.
Rhode Island: a decision in injunctive relief is expected soon in Block v Mollis, on the issue of whether the petition to recognize a party should be allowed to circulate in an odd year.
South Carolina: briefing is going on in S.C. Green Party v Election Commission, over whether a minor party nominee should be removed from the November ballot if that nominee later tries and fails to get the nomination of another party. South Carolina permits fusion yet makes it dangerous to try to use it.
Tennessee: the plaintiff minor parties submitted answers to the state’s extensive interrogatory requests 8 months ago. The state has not responded. The attorney for the minor parties is working on a brief asking for summary judgment, which will probably be filed by May 31. This is unusual, but since the state doesn’t seem interested in the evidence in the case, it may lose the chance to submit any evidence. The issue are the procedures to qualify a new party, which have not been used since 1968.
Washington: the state is trying to have the Libertarian Party’s lawsuit against “top two” dismissed without a further trial. A decision is likely any day on whether the case may continue. The case is called Washington State Republican Party v State, but at this point it is largely a Libertarian Party case.
This list only includes cases in which the constitutionality of a state’s ballot access laws are being challenged. It does not include cases over how a state has interpreted its own laws. Nor does it include cases filed by major party candidates.
Tennessee’s government, like apparently all governments in the world, is indeed uncaring and generally corrupt.
In the elections department, though, there are people who bend over backwards to help, even to help non-old-party people, including candidates.
When it comes to questions about petitioning, for example, and about how to qualify a new party, those people — people who actually work, not the people who get political patronage and appointments — deserve mostly praise.
Alas, the higher-ups, who are generally partisan to one degree or another, really will dawdle and hesitate and postpone as long as they can.
I think, though, they are in for a surprise this year, because even Tennesseans are getting fed up with non-responsive bureaucrats and agencies.
Just as we suspected in CT. There is no
way Senators Dodd and Lieberman could have gotten re-elected; the voting in CT is as corrupt as everything else in CT
Bysiewicz is planning to run for the AG’s Office; she won’t get my vote! Blumenthol is a TOP notch attorney but he is too involved with the Democratic Party and looks the other way to corruption in CT. Blumenthol’s Whistleblower Unit is completely ineffective as whistleblowers are driven into homelessness and povety. His office spends unlimited taxdollars and uses all the State’s resources to defend the Offending Agencies and to beat whistlelbowrs and their attorneys into the ground crying ‘Uncle’. Whistleblowers never even hear from their case managers and have no access to the auditor’s report regarding our cases. Blumenthol speaks of the Firewall in his Office when there is NO
Firewall between the Three Government Branches in CT: The Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches collaborate to retaliate against Whistleblowers and our children. Blumenthol knows his new proposed bills or protecting whistleblowers are as easily violated in CT courts as all laws
are violated against us. Yet, he circumvents all our efferts to remove the Whistleblower Unit from his office to an Independent Inspector General with subpeona powers to prosecute offenders in State Government who commit criminal acts against Whistleblowers and our children. We have worked for seven years to make this move because whistleblowers and our kids need real protections, assistance and the ability to obtain Justice in an open, fair and Just court process and not the Kangaroo courts we
all are subjected to in CT.
I have respect for AG Blumenthol and all he has done for CT fighting corporate corruption but the biggest employer in CT is the State of CT. There is gross waste of taxpayer dollars, burgeoning cost to maintain CT’s Conglomerate Government leaving too few taxdollars for the intended recipients. Blumenthal defends these
corrupt agencies fiercely allowing corruption and waste to prosper.
It’s time for Balance and if AG Blumenthal could get a ‘wake up’ call
and/or inspiration that CHANGE in the way CT does business, he could be a key
Leader bringing CT back to the great State it once was.
P.S.: Whistleblowers and their children should not be driven into poverty, homelessness, unjustly locked up or silenced by premature death by the
State of CT’s protocol of retaliations.
There is also a lawsuit that is currently on appeal in Oregon to require the state to print the names of minor political parties that cross-nominate major party candidates.
Do you have a case caption for the Tennessee case? I am trying to look it up. Thanks.
Libertarian Party of Tennessee et al v Thompson, US Dist. Ct (middle district) 3:08-cv-63, filed Jan. 23, 2008.