The Washington Post has this summary of when presidential primaries will be held in each state in 2016. The article reveals how much uncertainty still remains for many states.
These states will hold a presidential primary for the Libertarian Party: Arizona; California; Delaware if any Libertarians can get on the party’s presidential primary ballot, which is very difficult; Idaho if at least two Libertarians file; Missouri; Montana if at least two Libertarians file; Nebraska; North Carolina; Oklahoma if the party gets on the ballot; South Dakota if the party gets on the ballot.
These jurisdictions will hold a presidential primary for the Green Party: Arizona; California; Delaware with the same note as for the Libertarians; District of Columbia; Massachusetts; New York; Ohio.
What century will the genius MORONS in SCOTUS detect that every election is NEW —-
which requires EQUAL ballot access tests for ALL candidates for the same office in the same election area ???
I doubt Montana would hold a pres primary if two Libertarians flied. Those candidates would still need 500 signatures from Montana voters. In 2010 Libertarians should have had a Montana Libertarian Primary, having two U.S. Senate candidates. Despite having a majority of state offices filled the Secretary of State decided to just put all candidates to the general. Do the folks up in Montana know what they are doing?
The Montana legislature passed a bill (in 2013, I believe) that clarifies that qualified minor parties can have a primary if two or more candidates file for any partisan office.
Onward and Upward!
Everyone, we have such a good unity here, all ten Executives giving the “parliamentary go-ahead”.
Now in order to build the International Parliament as we need it, we’re going to need far more people constructing, building and contributing.
I am going to start electing every Minister to the Cabinet that I can find until we reach sixty because I want to make sure that this project grows,
We need every aspect of growth which surrounds building a parliament building whether virtual or concrete.
So please join me in accelerating this process to be much faster than we are currently going. We need to throttle and accelerate in order to catch up with lost time for unity.
See the Cabinet voting and nominate please. All are welcome!
http://www.international-parliament.org/cabinet1.html
There was HB 120 that included the following in section 63: (2) An Except as provided in subsection (3), an election administrator does not need to prepare a primary ballot for a political party if:
(a) the party does not have candidates for more than half of the offices to appear on the ballot; or and
(b) no more than one candidate files for nomination by that party for any of the offices to appear on the ballot.
So they replaced the OR with AND. It still seems like they want a majority of offices filled plus one contested office. HB 120 was a huge clean bill by the MT SOS.
The legislature messed up the law, and then the SOS didn’t want to print up a Libertarian ballot for every voter in the state, and so issued a literal but nonsensical interpretation of the law.
The fundamental condition to have a primary is to have a contested race. This can be statewide or a local race, such as for legislature. Primary ballots only need to be printed in the area where there is a contested race.
But at some point the Republicans or Democrats must have been concerned that they would have no contested races, which is quite possible given that most statewide races are coincident with the presidential election. If this happened, then the voters might have been handed a Democratic (or Republican) ballot, and told they could either vote it, or discard it, and only vote for nonpartisan offices. In such conditions, many Democrats would go ahead and vote a Republican ballot; or vice versa.
So they added a condition of a majority of races having a candidate:
Provide a ballot IF (contested races) OR (most races have a candidate).
But then they inverted the conditions, to state when not to print a ballot, but did it wrong. It should have been:
NOT (A OR B) => (NOT A) AND (NOT B). But they left the OR in, making it:
Don’t provide a ballot IF (no contested races) OR (no candidate for a majority of the races).
When a legislative committee was considering this language as part of an omnibus election bill, a senator or representative said that it didn’t make sense, and the explanation given was so no ballots would be printed if there weren’t contested races.
So a drafting error became law. The SOS and AG defended it on the grounds that the legislature presumptively knows what it is doing.
Had there been one county in Montana where there were Libertarians running for most offices on the ballot, then that county (or area of a county) would have had a Libertarian ballot. Those voters alone would have been able to determine the statewide nominee for senator.
After defending the absurdity of the law, the SOS recommended that the next legislature correct the law.
Are you familiar with De Morgan’s laws?
At one time, the conditions were when an election administrator needed to provide a ballot:
Provide a ballot when contested race OR most offices have a candidate.
The second condition was to ensure that there was a Republican or Democratic ballot even if there were no contested races, such as might happen if the congressional nomination were not contested, and it was a year with no US senate, gubernatorial, or other statewide offices.
They then changed the language to state when a county does NOT need to provide a ballot.
By De Morgan’s Law,
NOT (A OR B) = (NOT A) AND (NOT B).
But whoever drafted the change left the OR. HB 120, corrected it to the AND it should have been.
Under the law since HB 120, the conditions for NOT printing a ballot for a party, BOTH conditions have to be met:
No contested races AND fewer than half the races have candidates.