On December 3, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear Trump v Evers, 2020AP-1971, at this time. The case challenges acceptance of several hundred thousand votes cast last month. The plaintiffs argue that certain absentee votes should not have been counted. The vote was 4-3. Even one of the dissents says that if the Court had taken the case now, it doesn’t follow that any votes would have been invalidated. The majority depended on the fact that the law says a case of this type should have been filed in a trial court. The dissent acknowledges that, but says that the law violates the State Constitution. Of course the dissent also stresses the time urgency of the case. Here is the decision.
The American Solidarity Party is now on the board of the Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE), which was founded in 1985 and which is a very loose coalition of most of the nation’s nationally-organized minor parties, along with other organizations that care about ballot access for new and minor parties and independent candidates.
COFOE raises some funds, which are generally used to help pay for ballot access lawsuits. COFOE is expecting to pay for the printing costs soon for the North Carolina challenge to the March 3 independent presidential petition deadline. The Fourth Circuit had upheld that deadline, even as applied to presidential candidates, despite the U.S. Supreme Court having ruled in 1983 in Anderson v Celebrezze that Ohio’s March 20 is too early.
Texas has already certified its November 2020 election returns. Although Harris County says that Brian Carroll, American Solidarity presidential nominee, received 422 write-ins, the Texas Secretary of State official tally shows zero.
Also, the Texas Secretary of State’s tally shows 1,866 write-ins for President R. Boddie, another declared write-in presidential candidate. But the County says Boddie did not receive any write-ins in Bexar County.
The Texas Secretary of State says it is too late to fix these obvious errors, unless someone files a lawsuit. Thanks to the American Solidarity Party for this news.
In 2020, the Independent Party of Connecticut had 122 nominees for state and federal office. Sixteen of them were not nominees of the Democratic or Republican Parties. Among the 106 nominees who were nominees of one of the major parties, 87 were Republicans and 19 were Democrats.
Although that shows a strong preference for Republicans, it was still quite different from 2018 and earlier years, when almost all the Independent Party nominees were also Republican nominees. In 2018, the party only had five nominees who were not also major party nominees. Among the 121 nominees who were also major party nominees, 116 were Republicans and only five were Democrats.
The Independent Party is ballot-qualified for all the statewide offices except President, and is ballot-qualified for most of the district offices. If it had been ballot-qualified for president in 2020, it would have placed Rocky De La Fuente on the ballot, because the Independent Party is affiliated with the Alliance Party, and the Alliance Party had nominated De La Fuente.
The People’s Party, which is a national party in formation, has filed the notice in Maine that is required for new parties, before they can start their voter registration drive. Maine requires new and previously unqualified parties to obtain 4,000 registered members. The deadline is January 2022. It makes sense that the People’s Party would start in Maine, because Maine has ranked choice voting for congress, although still doesn’t have it in the general election for state office. See the People’s Party’s press release.