On June 6, the Illinois legislature passed HB 4488, which moves the petition deadline for independent candidates,, and the nominees of unqualified parties, from June to May. As of June 25, Governor J. B. Pritzker still hasn’t acted on the bill.
Because the petition deadline was yesterday, that means the bill can’t take effect this year, even though it is worded to take effect immediately.
Henry Wallace in 1948 was only certified for the ballot in eleven states, at the time of the Progressive Party’s presidential convention, held July 24-25. See Curtis MacDougall’s history book about the Wallace campaign, “Gideon’s Army”, page 445, volume two. Those eleven states only had 192 electoral votes.
On June 25, a New Jersey voter, Scott Salmon, sued the Secretary of State to force her to keep Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., off the November ballot. The basis for the lawsuit, which is filed in state court, is that Kennedy is a “sore loser” because he got some write-ins in the June 4 Democratic presidential primary in New Jersey. See this story.
The article does not mention that the New Jersey “sore loser” law has been interpreted not to apply to presidential candidates. In 1988 David Duke ran in the state’s Democratic presidential primary and also appeared on the New Jersey general election ballot as an independent. In 1992, Lyndon LaRouche did the same.
Kennedy withdrew from the race for the Democratic nomination on October 9, 2023, long before he had applied to be on any state’s Democratic presidential primary. The lawsuits asserts that because some voters voted for Kennedy in this month’s presidential primary, therefore he is a “sore loser.” Under that theory, New Jersey should have kept John Anderson off the November ballot in 1980, because he certainly also received some write-ins in the primary. Also New Jersey should have kept Pat Buchanan off the ballot in 2000, because he had been seeking the Republican nomination during 1999 and surely received some write-ins in the 2000 Republican presidential primary.
New Jersey does not have a declaration of write-in candidacy procedure. No one ever files to have his or her write-ins counted in New Jersey. Some counties tally write-ins but most don’t.
The New Jersey “sore loser” law, sec. 19:13-4, says, as to presidential candidates, “the petition or petitions shall not include the names of any candidates for President or Vice-President who have been nominated at a convention of a political party as defined by this title.” In New Jersey, only the Republican and Democratic Parties meet the definition of “party.”. Therefore, the law, as to presidential candidates, clearly only applies to major party nominees. It isn’t really a “sore loser” law at all; it is a ban on fusion for presidential elections.
As to candidates for non-presidential office, 19:13-4 says, “No such petition shall undertake to nominate any candidate who has accepted the nomination for the primary for such position.”
If the current CNN debate rules had been in place for a 1968 general election presidential debate, George Wallace would not have qualified. He was not on the ballot in states with at least 270 electoral votes as of June 20, 1968. A search of newspaper stories about Wallace’s petition efforts in 1968 reveals that he would have been on the ballot in states with, at the most, 189 electoral votes.
By June 20, he was on in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. He may or may not have been on in Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming. This post assumes that he was. The petitions in the unknown states, other than Tennessee and Wyoming, were so easy that newspapers didn’t seem to cover his submissions in those states.
Wallace’s party was on in California, but that party, the American Independent Party, had not yet nominated him, because state law at the time required party state conventions to be held in August, and only the state convention had the authority to choose presidential elector candidates and designate whom they were pledged to. CNN rules in 2024 won’t make any assumptions about nominations by one-state parties. CNN won’t count them until the paperwork is in.
June 24 is the Illinois petition deadline for independent candidates, and for nominees of unqualified parties. The Green, Libertarian, and Constitution Parties submitted petitions, as did independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The Illinois petition deadline had been in August until 1999, when it was moved to June. Illinois has one of the earliest petition deadlines for general election presidential candidates of any state. In 2000 a U.S. .District Court enjoined the deadline in a case filed by Ralph Nader, but no declarative relief was sought or granted. So the June deadline continues to exist in the law.
