On June 20, the ElectionLawBlog carried my guest commentary, criticizing California’s independent presidential petition procedure. It requires almost 200,000 signatures, to be collected in 105 days. Furthermore the petition can’t start to circulate until after the presidential candidate has chosen 54 presidential elector candidates, because their names and addresses must be squeezed onto all the petition forms.
The procedure is so difficult, no one has used it in 30 years.
Various political activists in Missouri with Republican Party backgrounds are hoping to launch a petition drive for John F. Wood as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate. See this story. The petition would need 10,000 signatures by July 25.
Tennessee voter registration forms do not ask the applicant to choose a party, and Tennessee is considered an open primary state. But in the May 3, 2022 primary for local partisan office, a Tennessee voter in Madison County was threatened with prosecution because he is known to be a Democrat, yet he voted in the Republican primary. The voter, Gabe Hart, describes this experience here. As he relates, the Secretary of State, Tre Hargett, in a speech, agreed with Madison County election officials and said insincere voters cannot vote in primaries.
See this commentary from the editor of the Jackson Sun, who disagrees with the Secretary of State.
Tennessee has its primary for federal and state office on August 4, 2022, so this issue may come up again. Thanks to Michael Drucker for this news.
New Mexico held primaries on June 7 for the Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian Parties. Here are the results. Only party members were able to vote in any party’s primary, although independent voters were permitted to join a party on primary day. The largest vote cast in the Libertarian primary was for Lieutenant Governor; 1,169 votes were cast. By comparison, in June 2020, there had been 1,570 votes cast in the Libertarian primary for president.
On June 7, Montana held contested primaries for the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian Parties. Any voter was free to choose any party’s primary ballot. The Green Party is also on the ballot but had no contested primaries, so no Green Party primary ballots were printed up.
In the U.S. House race, 2nd (eastern) district, which was the only part of Montana with a contested Libertarian primary, there were 97,000 votes cast in the Republican primary, 37,596 votes cast in the Democratic primary, and 2,037 votes cast in the Libertarian primary. See the results here.
The last time there was a contested minor party primary in Montana was 2020, when the Green Party had a contest for U.S. Senate, in which 759 votes were cast. The winner of that primary did not appear on the general election ballot because the Montana Supreme Court removed the party from the ballot after its primary was over.
