U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker will hold a trial in Baines v Dunlap, 1:19cv-509, on July 7, 2020. This is the Maine Libertarian ballot access case. The issues include the January 2020 deadline for a new party to qualify; the law that automatically converts members of a political party to independents when a party goes off the ballot; and the difficult requirements for a member of a small qualified party to get on his or her own party’s primary ballot. A statewide candidate needs 2,000 signatures of party members, no matter how many members that party has. Only party members may sign a petition to get a candidate on a primary ballot.
ONE MORE 14-1 EQUAL VIOLATION ??? — in a SMALL POP State.
July 7th is way too late for this. If the Libertarian Party loses the decision, or if it gets delayed beyond that date, the deadline to get on the ballot in Maine is in early August, the 1st I believe, or somewhere around then, which means there’s be little time to gather the 4,000 valid petition signatures necessary to get the LP’s presidential ticket on the ballot, and to further complicate things, petition signatures in Maine have to be separated by city/town, and Maine has around 400 of them, and the signature pages have to be turned in to each city/town election clerk, who check the validity rate of them, and then they have to be picked up and delivered to the Secretary of State’s office. If the LP waits on this court date, and loses, or if it gets delayed, the party will not be likely to qualify for the ballot in Maine for this election.