On September 1, the Libertarian statewide petition was submitted to the New Hampshire Secretary of State. The various towns had already certified the number of valid signatures for each town. The Secretary of State’s office then quickly added up the town results and told the Libertarian Party that the statewide nominees (including president and vice-president) will be on the ballot. The nominee for Governor is Max Abramson; the U.S. Senate nominee is Brian Chabot.
The Green Party will be submitting its presidential petition on September 2. According to the various town clerks, Jill Stein has approximately 4,000 verified signatures, so she will be on as well. Rocky De La Fuente will also be submitting his petition on September 2, and perhaps Evan McMullin will as well. The deadline is September 7.
So 50 state access is now essentially official.
How many signatures were submitted in New Hampshire?
I don’t think it is yet.
They still are not official on in CT, KY, and RI. The petition deadlines for KY and RI are September 9. As I understand it, petitions have been submitted in CT, and are awaiting confirmation.
That’s why I said essentially. There is no conceivable way they will miss the other three states, at least that’s the impression I’m under.
I thought the New Hampshire deadline was August 10. Well, that’s what Richard’s chart said a few months back. Was there a legal decision that I missed?
I think NH was August 10 to get the petitions in, but there is some process up there to send them out to the various towns for verification. I think that makes the verification process take longer. The same is the case, I believe, in CT.
Kentucky’s requirement is 5,000 signatures. Rhode Island is 1,000. I have no idea whether the LP has submitted any signatures yet in those states, if they are going to wait until the deadline, or some combination of the two.
By the way, I just checked Jill Stein’s website. She’s now showing that their petitions have been submitted in North Dakota and Rhode Island (ahead of both deadlines).
The Ballot Access News petitioning chart deadlines are the days when the signatures must be submitted to the authorities (whether town, county, or state). It is complicated terminology because some states have deadlines for the work to be finished, and a 2nd deadline for the campaigns to then pick up the petitions from the local authorities and deliver them to the state. In this modern era it is ridiculous for New England to require petitioning groups to physically take petitions to each town, and then later, when the towns are finished checking, the campaign must drive around to each town and pick up the results and carry everything to the Secretary of State. Federal law requires all states to have a centralized database of all registered voters in the state. New England is living in the dim past.
Richard:
I believe that in Rhode Island, the towns themselves will forward the certified petitions to the state. On the one hand, that eliminates one step for the candidates. But, on the other hand, a candidate doesn’t know for sure if he or she has enough certified signatures before the state gets them.
From what I have been told, in RI the LP has begun the process of submitting signatures to towns, but in KY they have to turn them in all at the same time and are still gathering signatures now. It’s not likely that any of the three remaining states will fail due to bad validity or some kind of screwup or dirty trick by one of the state SOSes but it is possible.