The attorney for the Georgia Secretary of State has won permission from the 11th Circuit to file a brief in Coffield v Handel, the case challenging Georgia’ ballot access requirements for independent candidates for U.S. House. The state’s brief had been due on September 17, and the state failed to meet this deadline.

Georgia requires a petition of 5% of the number of registered voters for an independent candidate for U.S. House to get on the ballot. Georgia requires a similar petition for minor parties, even those that are qualified statewide, unless that party polled 20% of the vote for President in the entire nation, or unless it polled 20% for Governor, at the last election. No one in Georgia has completed the 5% petition for U.S. House since 1964. All candidates and parties that have tried, have failed, even when they have submitted double the requirement. The rate of invalid signatures is always very high, because so many well-meaning voters sign the petition even though they don’t live in the appropriate district, and of course those signatures are invalid. There have been bills to ease the requirements in six sessions of the legislature in the past 20 years to ease these requirements, but they never pass.