In November 2008, 33 states hold regularly-scheduled U.S. Senate elections. There will be at least one minor party or independent candidate for U.S. Senate on the ballot in at least 22 states.
States in which there definitely will be no minor party or independent candidates for U.S. Senate on the ballot are Alabama, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming. There are ballot-qualified minor parties in all those states except Alabama, but those parties all chose not to run anyone for U.S. Senate. In New Mexico, though, even a ballot-qualified minor party would have needed a substantial petition.
It is uncertain if there will be a minor party or independent candidate for U.S. Senate this year in Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, and Rhode Island. In Montana, the only possibility is for independent candidate Steve Kelly to win his pending ballot access lawsuit.
Last time this set of Senate seats was up was in 2002. In 2002, there was at least one minor party or independent candidate on the ballot for U.S. Senate in all states except Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Mexico, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
In 2002 Jacob Hornberger ran for the Senate in Virginia as a Libertarian.
Right (although his ballot label was independent).
West Virginia is on the above 2002 list of states with no minor party or independent US Senate candidates on the ballot, but Virginia properly isn’t on that 2002 list of “no-choice” states.
Today, I am formally announcing that I plan to run for the US Senate seat up for election from the State of Alabama.
I will be running as a write-in candidate, as the ballot-access requirement in Alabama was too much to attempt to overcome.
You may be asking yourself, “why run as a write-in?”. The answer is simple, there is almost no difference between the Republicans and Democrats, and I can actually mention issues that are truly important that wouldn’t be discussed otherwise. Also, I estimate that between 1-2% of ballots cast this fall will be write-in votes, so, I’m giving the people a name to write-in.
If elected, I will introduce and sponsor the “Read the Bills Act”, “Write the laws Act”, as well as other legislation that will reduce the size and scope of the Federal Government.
Darryl W. Perry
Bio at http://dwp2016.org/Bio.html