On Septmeber 7, the Florida Secretary of State refused to put Evan McMullin on the November ballot as the Independent Party nominee, on the grounds that the Independent Party of Florida (which is on the ballot) is not recognized by the Federal Election Commission as a national committee, and also that the Independent Party of Florida is not even affiliated with any national party, FEC-recognized or not. Here is the letter of rejection.
The Independent Party has been on the ballot in Florida since before 2000, but this is the first time it ever tried to nominate anyone for President.
Again, another opportunity for McMullin to litigate ballot access that he won’t undertake as he once promised to do.
Ironically, McMullin’s campaign attorneys are in a Tallahassee law firm, Hopping Green & Sams.
I’m sorry but I don’t feel any sympathy for the Independent Party of Florida. First, they’re not a party. They’re mostly a collection of voters whose only common element is that they wrote in “Independent” on the voter registration form, most of them believing that would be registered independent of any political party. They were wrong. Some individual realized there were lots of these people and so decided to file paperwork for an Independent Party of Florida and made himself the chairman. Apparently he didn’t want any part of his little endeavor to come to the attention of the FEC so when McMullin came around looking for quick easy access to the Florida ballot, he made the mistake of thinking this sham party would do the trick. Wrong. Bad news for McMullin but a just outcome for the so-called Independent Party.
Richard, what prompts you to say “Independent Party of Florida (which is on the ballot)”? It is an officially recognized party in Florida, but that itself doesn’t confer ballot access.
Yes it does. The Independent Party has its own primary in Florida and anyone could have run for office in that primary, if they were registered members of that party. The Independent Party had two nominees for state representative in 2012, and they both did very well. Nancy Argenziano got 42.03% in the 34th district, and Kerry Babb got 32.66% in the 78th district.
I stand corrected. The candidates have to go through the normal filing fee or petition signature route, but once they’ve done that, yes, they are on the ballot. (that said, this process is no better/worse than an independent candidate would go through. the only difference is the label that would appear on the ballot in November.)
I’m still steamed about the Independent Party of Florida. I think of all the hard working volunteers and activists of minor parties striving to meet voter registration minimums for some purpose – ballot access or some other official recognition. And then I think of these charlatans attaining over 2% registration simply by taking advantage of paperwork misunderstandings…. It’s a cruel injustice.
For more, see this September 2010 article:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-09-02/news/os-election-other-parties-20100901_1_political-parties-third-party-independent-party
Six years further on, very little has changed. They’re still just an accident of bad legislation.
OK. I’m wiping my shoes of this turd and moving on.
It is not clear that the Independent Party of Florida is still a recognized party in Florida. A weakness of the Florida regulations is that they do not require a minimally active body of registered voters.
The chair of the Independent Party told me that they had to fend off being disqualified by the SoS, and that the Independence Party didn’t even put up a fight when the SoS went after them, so they will be disqualified after this year. I also got word that the Independent Party may join the Oregon-Minnesota coalition. The United Independent Party is already working with them.
The bylaws of the Independent Party of Florida says that the party does not have any procedure for choosing presidential electors.
I don’t know this for a fact, but I’d be willing to place a substantial wager that the bylaws of the Independent Party of Florida don’t include any provision stating something like “we don’t have any procedure for choosing presidential electors.”
I’m sure what Jim Riley actually means is that they don’t specify a procedure in their bylaws. If the contention is that Florida state law requires the procedure to be detailed in the bylaws, then it might be helpful to mention that part of the deal.