On June 17, U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Strickland enjoined the ballot-qualified Libertarian Party from calling itself the Libertarian Party. Libertarian National Committee v Libertarian Party of New Mexico, 1:26cv-1562. Here is the order. If the defendant wants to continue the case, it must post a bond of $20,000.
The order says, “This may require candidates running under the Libertarian Party of New Mexico name in this cycle to run as independents or seek the nomination of another party.” This seems stunningly naive. The Secretary of State was not a named defendant and was not otherwise brought into the lawsuit. If the Secretary of State continues to follow the election law and some members of the ballot-qualified party qualify for the general election ballot, this injunction cannot force the Secretary of State to block that candidate.
The ballot-qualified Libertarian Party has 14,399 registered members. The injunction makes no reference to their existence.
The “ballot qualified” party is the fake party.
With a write-in only ballot the state ballot monopoly would not print the names of candidates nor parties on the ballot. The state would count the names of individuals written by voters without regard to party affiliation, if any, of the candidates. It is difficult to see how such litigation could arise unless the plaintiff such as the LNC sued the individual candidates for trademark violation for referring to themselves as a “Libertarian” in their campaign literature. Libertarian is a generic term which cannot be trademarked any more than Democrat or Republican or Independent or Non-partisan or American. There no reputational inference that a person describing themself as Libertarian implies they are claiming membership affiliation with THE Libertarian Party Inc.
The trademarked term Libertarian Party refers only to one particular organization. If the term Libertarian cannot be used on the ballot as a cue to voters, then opinions as to its influence on election outcomes would be conjectural. Election campaigning ought NOT be censored in any way by the selective inclusion or exclusion of labels on a ballot other than that of the candidate themself. The only way to treat all candidates equally is no affiliation labels for all. Would you have the state print religious affiliation labels in the ballot?
Religious affiliation labels actually sounds like a great idea.
No need for any kind of ballots. Standing count solves all these problems.