On July 8, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove, a Bush Jr. appointee, upheld Kentucky’s definition of a qualified political party, which is a group that got 2% of the presidential vote within Kentucky in the previous presidential election. The 18-page decision in Libertarian Party of Kentucky v Grimes, e.d., 3:15cv-86, does not even discuss another aspect of the law that the plaintiffs complained about, namely that if an unqualified party wants to run a full slate of candidates for statewide state office, it must submit a separate petition for each of the 9 offices. The decision does not mention the evidence that a new party would need hundreds of thousands of signatures on multiple petitions if it wanted to run for all federal and state office. The other plaintiff in the case besides the Libertarian Party is the Constitution Party.

The only state interest identified by the decision is the need to “prevent voter confusion, avoid ballot overcrowding, and prevent frivolous candidates.” This is boiler-plate language from past unfavorable ballot access decisions.