Brian Doherty of Reason has this article about the events of the Libertarian National Convention being held in Sparks, Nevada, on Saturday, May 28. The convention continues on May 29-30.
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On May 27, the Pennsylvania candidate from 2021 who believes he will be injured if postal ballots in which the voter forgot to add the date next to his or her signature on the outer envelope asked the U.S. Supreme Court to quickly rule that such votes cannot be counted. Here is the application in Ritter v Migliori. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link. The case is 21A772. Justice Sam Alito has asked the other side to respond by Tuesday, May 31.
According to this story, independent candidate Sam Hunkler has qualified to be on the November 2022 ballot for Governor of Maine.
Given that fact, and other recent developments, such as the success of the Alabama general election petition for the Libertarian Party, and the Arizona primary ballot access success of Libertarian Marc Victor, it is possible that New York will be the only state in the nation with no opponent on the ballot to all the statewide Democratic and Republican nominees in 2022. It is still too early to tell about Kentucky (where the petition deadline is in August) and North Dakota (where the independent candidate petition deadline is in September).
Also, the above statement doesn’t apply to the states in which parties don’t have nominees and which limit the number of candidates who can appear on the general election ballot to just two (California and Washington) or four (Alaska).
On May 27, the Third Circuit released another order in Migliori v Lehigh County Board of Elections. This order confirms that the “materiality” part of the federal Voting Rights Act bars Pennsylvania from invalidating postal ballots just because the voter forgot to fill out the date on the outer envelope. The decision notes that all postal ballots are date-stamped when they are received in the elections office. Also the decision notes that there is no law that says a voter’s date must be accurate. So, the conclusion is that ballots should count because the information on the date line is immaterial to determining if the ballot is valid. Here is the decision. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.
On May 27, the California Secretary of State released the list of declared write-in candidates for the June 8 primary, for Congress and partisan state office.
It appears there will only be one or two minor party candidates on the general election ballot this year for any partisan race. There are no races in which there are only two candidates on the primary ballo9t and one of them is a minor party member.
When one combines the list of write-in candidates with the list of candidates who will be on the primary ballot, there is only once race in which it is settled that a minor party candidate will be on the general election ballot, and one other district in which it is somewhat likely. In the 8th Assembly race, Libertarian Thomas Nichols, who filed as a write-in, is one of only two candidates in the primary race, so he will be on the general election ballot. In the 59th Assembly race, there is an independent and a Libertarian who filed as write-ins, and there is only one candidate on the ballot, so the November election will either be between a Republican and an independent, or a Republican and a Libertarian.