Jesse Ventura has made a campaign ad for Gary Johnson, which focuses on general election debates. Ventura asks viewers to telephone the Commission on Presidential Debates and request more inclusive invitations.
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The Pennsylvania line-by-line petition-checking process for the statewide Libertarian Party petition has been proceeding this week, just as it has for each of the two previous weeks. On September 26, enough signtures had been validated by the adversarial process so that the petition now has the needed 20,601 valid signatures. Furthermore, there are still some signatures to go through the process.
It appears that the only possible method for the statewide candidates to be removed from the ballot now would be a ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, reversing the Commonwealth Court on whether certain signatures are invalid. The Commonwealth Court had ruled that signatures of voters are valid if that signer moved since re-registering and signed with the new address, whereas the old address is still on the voter registration rolls. This ruling only pertains to voters who move within the county, not voters who move to another county. Assuming the Pennsylvania Supreme Court approves this ruling, or takes no action, then the statewide Libertarians are on the ballot.
The only other parties on the ballot for statewide offices are Democratic, Republican, and Green, and the Green Party petition only listed a presidential and vice-presidential nominee; there are no Greens running for U.S. Senate or the other statewide offices. By contrast, the Libertarian petition nominated candidates for U.S. Senate, Attorney General, and Treasurer.
Robert R. Raymond is an individual who wishes to circulate petitions in California, even though he is domiciled in Wisconsin. He has been a professional petition circulator for twenty years. During the last week of August, he sued nineteen California counties, after ascertaining that these particular nineteen counties would not permit him to work in their counties. The cases pending in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District have been combined, as have the cases pending in the Eastern District (in California, the northern district is centered in San Francisco, and the eastern district is centered in Sacramento, although those districts have other courthouse locations).
The counties that are being sued are: Alpine, Amador, Glenn, Humboldt, Inyo, Kings, Marin, Monterey, Napa, Placer, Plumas, San Benito, San Francisco, San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Stanislaus, Tehama, and Yolo.
California legislators has been deaf to requests that they introduce bills to repeal residency requirements for circulators. It has been over four years since the 9th circuit struck down restrictions on out-of-state circulators, in Nader v Brewer, an Arizona case. California and Arizona are both in the 9th circuit. Since then, the Arizona legislature has repealed residency requirements for circulators of all types of petition. The top-two open primary initiative in Arizona this year, Prop. 121, probably would not have got on the Arizona ballot if the proponents had not been able to hire professional circulators who don’t live in Arizona.
A status conference on the cases in the Eastern District will be held on December 10, 2012, before U.S. District Court Judge Garland Burrell. The case in each county has its own case number, but one of the cases is Raymond v Howard, 2:12-cv-2215. That happens to be the case against Alpine County.
This good Connecticut news story answers the question about how the overseas absentee ballot and its accompanying list of candidates is arranged. The story says the candidates are listed in alphabetical order, which solves the problem of which parties to list first.
On September 26, Gonzales Research & Marketing Strategies released a poll of the U.S. Senate race in Maryland. The results: incumbent Democrat Benjamin Cardin 50%, Republican nominee Dan Bongino 22%, independent Rob Sobhani 21%, undecided or other 7%. There are four candidates on the ballot; the one not mentioned by the pollsters is Libertarian nominee Dean Ahmad. Thanks to Doug McNeil for the link.
This poll for the Iowa U.S. House race, 3rd district, shows the two incumbents tied with each other, and one of the other candidates in the race with a large vote. There are two incumbents running against each other because Iowa lost a U.S. House seat after the 2010 census. The results: Republican incumbent Tom Latham 45%, Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell 45%, independent Scott Batcher 7%, other or undecided 3%.
Batcher is a healthcare consultant. Here is his web page, which appears to have been created in 2010 when he ran in the Republican primary in the Third District. That 2010 Republican primary had seven candidates, and Batcher placed 7th.
The ballot lists four candidates, but the poll did not mention the fourth candidate, Socialist Workers Party nominee David Rosenfeld. The 3rd district includes Des Moines and the southwest quadrant of Iowa. In 2010, the Socialist Workers Party nominee for the 3rd district seat polled 2.60%. Thanks to Mike for the link.