Mary Norwood, independent candidate for Chair of the Fulton County, Georgia Commission, plans to submit more than 44,000 valid signatures on the petition deadline, July 13.  She also plans to sue to overturn the law that says an independent candidate must file a declaration of candidacy several weeks before the petition itself is due.

The Georgia primary is July 20, and the run-off primary is August 10.  Independent candidates, of course, do not run in partisan primaries.

Courts that have ruled that independent candidate deadlines cannot be earlier than the primary (or the day before the primary) included the US Courts of Appeals in the 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 11th circuits, and also U.S. District Courts and state courts in certain states that are not in those circuits, namely Alaska, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, and Ohio.  Georgia is in the 11th circuit.  The 11th circuit case that struck down an early petition deadline for independent candidates is New Alliance Party of Alabama v Hand, 933 F 2d 1568 (1991).  Norwood does not plan to contest the petition deadline of July 13, just the July 2 deadline for paying the filing fee.

Georgia is one of only five states that requires an independent candidate to file a declaration of candidacy in advance of actually submitting the petition.  The others are Kentucky (but only candidates for state office, not federal office), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Texas.  West Virginia formerly had such a law but it was repealed in 2009.  South Carolina formerly had such a law but it was invalidated in Cromer v State in 1990.