In 2008, five Florida voters filed in the Green Party primary to run for the legislature. No Green Party leaders had ever been aware of them, and circumstantial evidence suggested that Republican Party activists had recruited them to run, for the purpose of giving the Republican nominees in those five districts an advantage. Although all five races had been expected to be close, Democrats won all five despite the presence of the Green Party nominees.

The state chair of the Green Party filed a lawsuit last year, seeking to find out whether the candidates’ campaign finance reports might have been untruthful, because each said he or she paid the filing fee of approximately $2,000 without help from any outside source, which seems dubious. There was to have been a deposition of one of the candidates on September 23, but it was cancelled, for the second time, because no one knows where that one candidate is now, so she couldn’t be served. The plaintiffs will now seek to depose the other four candidates, if they can be found. The case is called King v Roman, Pasco Co., 6th dist., 51-2008-ca-8091.