North Carolina has three constitutional ballot access lawsuits pending. One is in the State Supreme Court, and concerns the rules for new and previously unqualified parties to get on the ballot, as well as other issues such as the ability of voters to register into unqualified parties, and whether a party should be able to get on the ballot in just part of the state if it isn’t on statewide. This case is 5 years old.
Also, there is the case filed in 2008 against the independent candidate procedures for U.S. House, which are so strict, they have never been used, in the 109 years North Carolina has had government-printed ballots.
Finally, there is the February 2010 lawsuit, which raises an issue that has not been raised anywhere in the U.S. in a lawsuit, until now. This new case argues that if an independent candidate ran in the immediately preceding election, and now is running again, that same candidate should not need a second petition, if his or her vote total in the earlier election was significant. See this story about that lawsuit. The story, toward the end, erroneously says Brody is one of only two independent candidates who has ever been on a government-printed ballot. That is not correct. Ross Perot got on as an independent presidential candidate, and about 7 or 8 independent candidates for the legislature have been on in the last twenty years.
Is he planning to run for the same Gouse seat? The article says he is a “congressional” candidate.
Yes, he is planning to run for the same House District (103). The article got that wrong, as well as some other small things such as the requirements that the NCFPE’s bill proposal would ask for. The proposals requirements are staggered based no the level of the office, between state, district and county level office. The District and County Office proposal is a 1/4 of 1% (or 0.25%) of the total number of registered voters eligible to vote for that office as of Jan. 1 of the election year (opposed to the current 4%) with a cap of NO more than 1,500 for Congressional Candidates, NO more than 500 for State Senate (or a multiple county State House District), and NO more than 250 for a County or single County State House district, and NO more than 50 for a district office which is less than an entire county. Also the Statewide Unaffiliated requirement would be set at 5,000 signatures.
The last time we tried to put set number requirements instead of percentage requirements for the District and lower offices they were immediately changed back to percentage requirements which were harder than what we proposed. Hopefully this will allow us to keep a lower requirement this time around.
Also the NCFPE is still working on the issue of the article above, on how an Independent can retain access to the ballot for the immediately following election. Any input can be sent to us at info@ncfpe.com.