Ballot Access News

On February 23, California election officials explained for the first time why Peta Lindsay can’t be on the Peace & Freedom Party presidential primary ballot. The Secretary of State instructed county elections officials to tell the Lindsay campaign that she may not appear on the presidential primary ballot because she is under age 35. Lindsay campaign officials tried to pick up petition blanks to add her to the ballot by petition, but county elections officials refused to release the forms.

The Secretary of State still has not explained why she won’t print Stephen Durham on the PFP presidential primary ballot. There is no allegation that he doesn’t meet the constitutional qualifications, yet the Secretary of State won’t print his name on the PFP ballot either. However, no election official seems to be blocking Stephen Durham’s ability to collect the signatures of 1% of PFP registrants, and to get on the ballot that way.

Peta Lindsay is the presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Stephen Durham is the presidential nominee of the Freedom Socialist Party. Because neither of those two parties is ballot-qualified in California, they are both seeking the presidential nomination of the Peace & Freedom Party, which is ballot-qualified.

The Oklahoma ballot access case, Libertarian Party of Oklahoma et al v Ziriax, will probably have an oral argument during the first week in March. The plaintiffs, who include the Green Party, are seeking injunctive relief against the March 1 petition deadline for new parties. Here is the brief of the plaintiffs, in support of the motion for an injunction.

On February 23, the Missouri House Rules Committee passed HB 1236. This is the bill that fixes a typographical error in the law. The error says that even though the petition to qualify a new party doesn’t need to list any candidates in general, it must list candidates for presidential elector (if that party intends to run a presidential nominee). The Rules Committee passed the bill unanimously so it is likely to pass the House on the consent calender soon.

There have been bills to fix this problem in the past, but in the past, these bills were merged in with other election law bills, and those other bills sometimes had unrelated controversial provisions, which caused them to either fail to get through the entire legislative process, or which caused a gubernatorial veto. So far, this year, the bill to fix the typographical error is being kept as a separate bill, which helps.