On February 20, the West Virginia Supreme Court refused to hear McClure v Manchin, the Libertarian Party’s 2004 lawsuit against the May petition deadline for non-presidential petitions. As a result, all minor parties are stuck with a system in which all the party’s nominees can be listed on a single petition, but that petition is due in May. The presidential petition is due in August. But the two separate deadlines means that a party can’t do a petition for all its nominees if it relies on the August deadline.

The lower court decision in this case was very unthoughtful. The lower court ruled that the state needs all that time to check the petition. That is obviously not true, because the state has no trouble checking presidential petitions that are due in August.