This news story says the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., campaign spent $1,100,000 on its New York petition drive. It also says the campaign has filed a lawsuit to overturn New York state ballot access laws. This post will be updated when more information about the lawsuit is found.
On May 28, the Ohio Senate passed a bill that moves the deadline for a qualified party to certify its national ticket from 90 days before the general election, to 74 days before. If the bill becomes law, the deadline will be August 23.
UPDATE: the bill is HB 271. Here is the text. It applies only to the 2024 election. It also outlaws contributions to initiative campaigns from foreigners, something the Ohio Republican legislators strongly favor.
Other bills relating to the deadline for certification of national tickets have also been introduced in the special session:
1. SB 279, only relates to the deadline, and only applies to the 2024 election
2. SB 280, only relates to the deadline, moves the deadline permanently to 60 days before the general election (early September).
3. HB 2, only relates to the deadline, applies only to 2024, moves it to 65 days before the general election.
On September 28, Georgia filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of its law that Public Service Commissioners are elected in at-large partisan elections. Rose v Raffensperger, 23-1060.
The court fight over whether the elections should be at-large or by district has resulted in eliminating any election for that office in November 2024. That has implications for ballot access. A qualified minor party stays on the ballot in Georgia by polling 1% of the number of registered voters for any statewide office. With no Public Service Commisioner in November 2024, the only statewide office will be President. The Libertarian Party, the only ballot-qualified third party in Georgia, generally doesn’t meet the Georgia vote test for President. It only did so once, in 2016. But usually that doesn’t matter because the party always easily meets the vote test for Public Service Commissioner and for U.S. Senate, the only two other statewide offices up in presidential years. By bad luck, there is no U.S. Senate election in Georgia in 2024, so the party will lose its qualified status if it doesn’t meet the vote test for President.
That qualified status only applies to statewide office. It doesn’t apply to district and county office, so even though the Libertarian Party is qualified in Georgia now, it is only qualified for statewide office. That is why neither it, nor any other third party, has ever appeared on the ballot in a regularly-scheduled U.S. House election. Special elections for U.S. House don’t require any petitions so there have been minor party candidates in special U.S. House elections in Georgia.
The U.S. Supreme Court will probably decide during June whether to hear Rose v Raffensperger. If the Court refuses to hear it, then the state will have won the lawsuit and someone at that point might sue the state to force it to hold a statewide Public Service Commissioner election in November 2024. However there would be no clear solution as to how the Democratic and Republican Parties would nominate for that office, because the primary was held on May 21.
The Democratic National Committee’s Rules & Bylaws Committee will meet on June 4, and will consider a resolution that would bring about a virtual meeting of delegates to the national convention to, choose the presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The motive is to comply with the Ohio August 7 certification deadline.
Section 3505.10 of the Ohio election law says the ballot shall list the “names of the candidates for president and vice president nominated as such by the national convention of a political party to which delegates and alternates were elected in this state at the next preceding primary election.” In order for this idea to be legal, the virtual meeting (probably a zoom meeting of several thousand delegates) would be the official Democratic national convention, not the in-person meeting being held in Chicago in late August.
It is puzzling that the Ohio Democratic Party doesn’t file a lawsuit to overturn the early certification deadline. Such a lawsuit is overwhelmingly likely to win. The Democratic Party’s idea robs the actual meeting of much its dignity and importance.
On March 16, the Approval Voting Party, which is ballot-qualified in Colorado, nominated Blake Huber for president. His running mate is Andrea Denault.
Huber was also the party’s presidential nominee in 2020. That year he got 355 votes in Colorado, the only state in which he was on the ballot. In 2016 the party ran Frank Atwood fpr president. He was only on the ballot in Colorado, and he got 337 votes.
