Anthony Garcia, a registered Libertarian, has been elected to the School Board that runs the Francis Tuttle Technology Center. The Board is responsible for a tech college, in cooperation with six local school boards. Garcia had been appointed to the board, but now an election is being held to fill the five seats on the board. Garcia is the only candidate who filed for the zone four seat, so he is automatically elected. Thanks to Chris Powell for this news.
According to this Independent Political Report story, the Forward Party is likely to nominate Brian Mannix for U.S. House in 2022, in New York’s Eighth District.
The hostile ballot access changes in New York state in 2020 did not impact candidates for district office. Mannix will need 3,500 signatures collected in six weeks between March and May. The 2020 change raise the statewide petition from 15,000 to 45,000, but did not alter the district petition requirements.
On December 10, the Georgia Secretary of State filed this reply brief in the Eleventh Circuit in Cowen v Raffensperger, 21-13199. This is the Libertarian Party case against the 5% petition for district and county partisan office. The U.S. District Court had struck the law down.
The state’s brief is deceptive when it says that when the Libertarian Party once made a strong effort to qualify a U.S. House candidate, it almost succeeded. The state fails to say that in that instance, the petition had been lowered to 3%, for 2002 only, due to late redistricting. The state also says no other Libertarian ever made a truly serious effort to try to meet the 5% petition requirement for U.S. House, but the state fails to mention several other petitioning candidates who did make a very strong effort, yet still failed. These instances are mentioned in the Libertarian Party’s brief.
The Kansas City Star has this op-ed by Larry R. Bradley about the initiative for a top-four system currently circulating in Missouri. Bradley supports ranked choice voting, but he criticizes the initiative, both because it eliminates the ability of parties to have nominees, and also because it seems obvious that if ranked choice voting is so good, it should be used in primaries as well as general elections.
Bradley does not mention another flaw in the initiative, which is that it makes it almost impossible for a third party to become or remain ballot-qualified. This is because if parties don’t have nominees (except for president), they can’t meet the vote test, except for president. Currently the typical minor party that gets on the ballot in Missouri is able to remain on, because it isn’t that difficult for a minor party to poll 2% for one of the lesser statewide races, such as Auditor or Treasurer. But under the initiative, the only office for which the vote test would still work is president, and it’s extremely difficult for minor parties to poll 2% for president. The Libertarian Party has only done it once (2016). The Green Party has only done it once (2000). The Constitution Party has never done it.
Daniel Caldwell of Fort Worth, Texas, is a candidate in the 2022 elections for Texas Board of Education, a partisan post. He is seeking the nomination of all four ballot-qualified parties: Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, and Green, according to this story.
