On May 17, five Georgia county election board members, and other groups and individuals, filed a federal lawsuit against the part of SB 202 that allows the State Election Board to remove county election boards and take complete control of election administration in such counties. The lawsuit challenges other parts of SB 202 as well. Coalition for Good Governance v Raffensperger, n.d., 1:21cv-2070.
The Complaint is 206 pages long. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
On May 17, former Louisiana Congressman and Governor Buddy Roemer died at the age of 77. See this obituary. He had been the leading candidate for the presidential nomination of Americans Elect in 2012. Americans Elect was a new party that had placed itself on the ballot in most states during 2011 and early 2012. Its rules said that any registered voter could vote in the party’s private on-line presidential primary, and if any candidate received at least 10,000 votes, the party would nominate whomever placed first. But Roemer only received 6,293 votes, more than anyone else who had sought the nomination, but not enough to be deemed nominated. Therefore Americans Elect had no candidate in the 2012 presidential election and asked state election officials to remove it from the list of qualified parties.
Americans Elect also let its primary voters vote for someone who had not declared for the nomination. Ron Paul received the most votes of any person. He received 9,498 votes, but even if he had met the threshold, he probably would have refused to run.
Thanks to Independent Political Report for the news.
The Unity Party, which ran Bill Hammons for president in 2020, is now ballot-qualified in Florida. Here is a list of the qualified parties from the Florida Secretary of State’s website.
On May 17, out-of-state petitioners filed their Reply Brief in Benezet v Boockvar, 20-2976. This is the case against the Pennsylvania ban on out-of-state circulators for primary petitions. Pennsylvania already permits out-of-state circulators for general election petitions.
In this case, the U.S. District Court had declared the primary election ban unconstitutional, but she wrote the decision so that it only applies to the particular plaintiffs who filed the case. So the appeal, filed by the petitioners, aims to persuade the Third Circuit that the ban is unconstitutional for any future out-of-state circulators.
The City has this detailed article about possibilities for independent candidates, and minor parties, in the New York city election of 2021, not just for Mayor, but for other positions as well.
The hostile 2020 ballot access changes do not apply to petitions other than statewide petitions. Not only that, in 2021, the legislature passed a bill cutting the number of signatures in half (for 2021 only) so a candidate for the general election for New York city citywide office only needs 3,750 signatures. However the 2019 bill moving the petition deadline from August to May does impact the 2021 city petitions. The petition deadline is May 25.
