A new party called Descendants of Americans Slaves has qualified two candidates for the Kentucky state legislature. Norris Shelton, author of “America’s Little Black Book”, is the only opponent to the Democratic nominee in the 33rd State Senate district in Louisville. Henry Owens III is the only opponent of the Democratic nominee in the 41st State House district, also in Louisville. Here is some information about Shelton.
On October 22, Suffolk University released a poll for the Ohio presidential race, which asks voters about all seven candidates listed on the ballot. The poll also asks what percentage of voters have heard of the various presidential candidates. See it here. Thanks to Mike for the link. There is so much publicity about Ohio being a crucial state, it is somewhat likely that the minor party vote in Ohio is depressed, relative to the vote in non-swing states.
On October 21, voters in Stuttgart, Germany elected a Green Party Mayor. See this story. Stuttgart is the sixth largest city in Germany, and has over 600,000 residents in the city limits, and millions in the metropolitan area.
The Metropolitican News Enterprise, a Los Angeles daily newspaper covering legal news for 110 years, has a story about the October 18 decision of a U.S. District Court in Justice Committee v Bowen. That is the decision that declared California’s deadline for groups trying to qualify as parties to be too early.
Illinois permits unqualified parties to circulate a petition with stand-in candidates, and because the petition deadline is so early (June 25 this year), the Green Party used a stand-in, Howie Hawkins, for vice-president. When the party started circulating its petition, it didn’t know who its vice-presidential nominee would be. Technically, it didn’t know for sure who its presidential candidate would be either, but the Illinois Green Party leaders assumed it would be Jill Stein.
Later, after the petition had succeeded, the party attempted to replace Hawkins with the actual vice-presidential nominee, Cheri Honkala. However, the paperwork for that was late, so Hawkins remains on the Illinois ballot for vice-president. This doesn’t really matter. In 1996, the Reform Party was unable to replace its vice-presidential stand-ins with the actual vice-presidential nominee, Pat Choate, in most states, because Choate was chosen so late. This is just another reminder that the true candidates in November are the candidates for presidential elector, and the information on the ballot about the names of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees is just information about the intentions of the elector candidates. This is an elementary point, based on Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, that the Michigan Secretary of State, and some federal judges in Michigan, do not grasp.
