On February 21, the North Dakota Libertarian Party asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its ballot access case. North Dakota won’t let minor parties place nominees on the November ballot for legislature unless between 10% and 15% of all the voters who turn out in a primary election choose that minor party’s primary ballot. The case is Libertarian Party of North Dakota v Jaeger. Here is the cert petition.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear any ballot access appeal brought by a minor party or independent in the past twenty years (excluding a Georgia case over whether candidates can be forced to take a drug test), this is the first appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court since 1968 involving a ballot access hurdle that requires support greater than 5% of the electorate.
As far as the presidential race, the Libertarians will be on the ballot in all 50 states. This puts Gary Johnson, the presidential front-runner in an ideal position to compete head to head with the Repubs and Dems.
Why will 2012 be different than 2008 or 2004? The last time the LP was on all 51 ballots was 2000 and even then the nominee on the Arizona ballot was not the national convention choice.
#2, the problem in North Dakota is only for legislative candidates.
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@1 Word is that LP Oklahoma is set to fail this week.
That’s down to 49 max if true.
However, Americans Elect will probably not fail to get on the ballot in any states.
It is likely that they will be taken seriously whereas the LP will once again be largely ignored, just like when they ran Ron Paul and Bob Barr, and just like Johnson was ignored in the Republican primaries.
If Bloomberg is on the Americans Elect ticket they could well be in the national presidential debates, win electoral votes, even win the presidency.
Gary Johnson will probably not break 1%.
Yet another chance to bring up —
Separate is NOT equal.
Brown v. Bd of Ed 1954 — a mere 14 years BEFORE the 1968 OH case — which started the mere 44 years of MORON ballot access cases since 1968.
and
Each election is NEW and has ZERO to do with any prior event in the history of the universe — except perhaps the actual number of voters in the preceding election in the election area involved.
WHAT so-called ballot access lawyer has ANY brain cells about Election Law 001 stuff ???
#5, you haven’t taken account of the Oklahoma ballot access case, which will probably have its hearing the first week in March.