On May 6, the Maine Secretary of State filed this ten-page brief, explaining why a U.S. District Court should not order the Secretary of State to recognize the Libertarian Party for the 2016 general election. The case is Libertarian Party of Maine v Dunlap, 2:16v-2.

The brief is internally contradictory. One of the issues is whether the party’s registrants should be restored to being Libertarians. After the Secretary of State had determined in December 2015 that the Libertarian Party did not have the needed 5,000 registered members to qualify, he revoked all those registrations and converted the voters into independents, without even telling them. Yet on page four the state says, “Voters have a right to make their own enrollment decisions.” The Secretary of State says it would be wrong to restore the voters to being Libertarians without telling them. And to the party’s request that election officials contact those voters and ask them for a new decision, the Secretary says that would be too much work.

The Secretary also says that it would be too much work to let other voters register into the Libertarian Party (see page five).

The Secretary also says that letting the Libertarian Party nominate by convention would be to require that the court re-write Maine election law. However, many other courts have ordered newly-qualifying parties onto the general election ballot, after it was too late for a primary, even though the states in those other cases required newly-qualifying parties to nominate by primary. Those courts include the U.S. Supreme Court, which put the American Independent Party on the ballot in Ohio in 1968 after the primary was over. They also include U.S. District Courts in Arkansas in 1996, Hawaii in 1986, Nebraska in 1976, Nevada in 1986, Ohio in 1976 and 2008, Oklahoma in 1984, and Tennessee in 2012.