On January 25, the Alabama Libertarian Party asked the Alabama Secretary of State to approve presidential substitution on petitions. That means, the party would like to circulate an independent presidential petition now, but since it doesn’t know who the presidential candidate will be, the party wants to use a stand-in. He or she would then withdraw and the actual nominee could be substituted.

Alabama previously let John B. Anderson use a stand-in vice-presidential candidate on his 1980 independent petition. He listed Milton Eisenhower for vice-president, but Eisenhower was a stand-in. Alabama, and almost all other states, let Anderson substitute the actual v-p candidate, Patrick Lucey, after Anderson chose him on August 27, 1980.

Many other states approved presidential substitution during the 1990’s. Those favorable rulings made it possible for the Libertarian Party to move its presidential convention from Labor Day of the odd year before the election, to the summer or spring of the election year itself. The issue hadn’t arisen in Alabama before because the Libertarian Party was a ballot-qualified party in Alabama in 1996 and 2000.