U.S. Senate Candidate from California Spends Week in Russian-Controlled Parts of Ukraine

John Thompson Parker, the Peace & Freedom Party candidate for U.S. Senate in California, has recently spent a week in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine. Although other U.S. politicians and members of Congress have also visited Ukraine during May, Parker is probably the only U.S. candidate who has spent his time in the Russian zone. Many activists in the Peace & Freedom Party are also active in parties that operate within PFP. Parker is with the Socialist Unity Party, which split from the Workers World Party in 2018. The Socialist Unity Party newspaper is La Lucha. Here is a link to La Lucha in which Thompson talks about his trip.

Scotusblog Suggests U.S. Supreme Court is Likely to Accept Case on Whether Persons Born in American Samoa are Citizens

Scotusblog here suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to accept the cert petition in Fitisemanu v U.S., the case over whether persons born in American Samoa are automatically citizens. The lower court had ruled that they are not. The case arose when some individuals living in Utah, who were born in American Samoa and who never went through the naturalization process, could register to vote in Utah. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.

Arizona Libertarian for U.S. Senate Qualifies for Primary Ballot; First Time Since Hostile 2015 Law Change

Marc J. Victor has qualified to appear on the Arizona Libertarian primary ballot of August 2, 2022. He is the first Libertarian to qualify for the Libertarian primary ballot in Arizona, for any federal or state office, since the legislature made primary ballot access for small established parties very difficult. That change was made in 2015.

Other Libertarians this year have filed as write-ins in the primary, but the 2015 law makes it extremely difficult for established minor parties to nominate by write-in in their own primary.

Qualified minor parties that have not been on the ballot for very long are permitted to nominate by write-in in their own primaries, with only a single write-in vote. Thus the Green Party had nominees on the Arizona ballot in 2016 and 2018. But in 2020 and this year, the Green Party is not ballot-qualified.