The deadline for independent presidential petitions has passed in Tennessee. Four candidates submitted a petition by the deadline: Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, Merlin Miller of American Third Position, and Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party.
The federal courts put the Green Party and the Constitution Party on the ballot this year, so the Green Party and the Constitution Party didn’t need to petition for their presidential candidates. But because Tennessee election officials have hinted they don’t believe the court order applies to presidential nominees, the Constitution Party did the independent petition for Goode just to be safe.
I’m actually surprised at this. Tennessee seems to have fairly easy laws to get on the ballot. I figured we’d see Roseanne Barr, the Prohibition party and other parties making it on.
Not as easy as it sounds. Each sheet has to have physical signatures from the presidential candidate, Gary Johnson had to rearrange his schedule and fly to Tennessee just for this purpose. For campaigns with even less money it could have been a logistical impossibility.
They also have to have electors in each congressional district sign a form. I don’t remember this from when I worked there in 2008, but the Greens told me this year that it had to be all on one page and that the sheet had to be recirculated to have the same 11 people, 9 of whom are in each congressional district, sign again for the VP candidate. I’m guessing they did not make it since the article does not mention Green Party.
So yeah 275 valid sounds easy, but in some ways it is not. LP apparently only had 175 of the first 415 counted valid by the state…….hopefully the second round (the ones they got in the last two days) are deemed more valid or they got larger numbers to make up for it.
@2. The Green Party did not try to circulate petitions and did not have to. As the second paragraph of the article mentions, the Green Party is on the ballot by court order.
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how many states id Rocky Anderson likely to be on the ballot?