Terry Michael has this op-ed in USA Today, advocating that the general election presidential debates include all candidates who could theoretically be elected. The column assumes that this would involve a four-way debate, but it is not yet determined whether five candidates or four candidates will be on the ballot in states containing a majority of electoral votes.
On August 21, the New York Times ran a correction about its July 13 story on Jill Stein. The July 13 story had said if Stein is approved for primary season matching funds, she will be the first Green Party candidate to have received them. The correction says that she would be the second Green Party candidate to receive them, and notes that Ralph Nader received them in 2000 when he was the Green Party candidate.
The Connecticut Supreme Court has accepted jurisdiction in Republican Party of Connecticut v Merrill. Oral argument will be held on September 12. Connecticut law says the party that polled the most votes for its gubernatorial candidate should be listed first on the ballot. The Republican Party received more votes than any other party for Governor in 2010, but the Secretary of State, who is a Democrat, put the Democratic Party first on the ballot because she adds the votes of the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party together, and that sum is greater than the Republican Party vote total.
Connecticut ought to have a law that provides for either rotation, or random selection, to determine order of parties on the ballot. Approximately one-third of the states do have a policy that gives all parties a chance to appear first on the ballot.
Mark Luce is a registered independent and a member of the Napa County Board of Supervisors. He is running for re-election in November against a registered Democrat. California counties publish Voters Guides that are sent to all voters, and they permit candidates for local office to include a statement about themselves. All California county and city elections are non-partisan.
According to this story, the Napa County Registrar of Voters has told Luce that he cannot say in his statement that he is a registered independent. The law does not permit candidates for non-partisan office to mention their party affiliation in the pamphlet. The Registrar of Voters believes that, therefore, they cannot mention independent status either. Luce complained but the article does not say that he intends to sue.
On or before the August 21 deadline, three independent presidential petitions were submitted in New York. The petition for Virgil Goode has approximately 23,000 signatures. The petition for Peta Lindsay of the Party for Socialism and Liberation has approximately 26,500 signatures. The number of signatures for Gary Johnson is approximately 25,500 signatures. The state requires 15,000.
In New York, as in half the states, candidates listed on independent petitions are free to choose a partisan label other than just the word “independent.”
The Green Party is a ballot-qualified party in New York, so did not need to submit a petition. The other three ballot-qualified minor parties in New York are expected to cross-endorse the major party nominees.
No minor party statewide petition has been successfully challenged in New York since 1976, when Eugene McCarthy’s independent presidential petition was challenged. Even in 2004, when Nader was the subject of such hostility, no one challenged his New York petition. However, Nader was on the ballot in two lines in New York state in 2004, so a potential challenge to his petition would still have left him on the ballot. He was the Independence Party’s nominee in New York in 2004, plus he did his own separate petition just in case he didn’t get the Independence Party nomination.
