The Equal Time Law, passed by Congress in 1934, still exists. It has been pruned back by court decisions that say “bona fide news shows” are exempt. However, a “bona fide news show” must include more than one candidate. On October 9, Rush Limbaugh interviewed President Trump for two hours, and no other candidate was on the same show.
On October 13, Howie Hawkins, Green Party nominee, asked for equal time. The equal time law is in section 315(a).
The Alton Telegraph has this story, pointing out that almost half of Illinois legislative elections have only one candidate on the ballot. Thanks to Sam Cahnman for the link. This shows how absurd it was for Illinois Democrats to attack the U.S. District Court decision that cut the number of signatures for minor party and independent candidates to just 10% of the normal requirement, for 2020 only. Democrats tried to overturn the ruling on the basis that the ballots would be “flooded” with too many candidates.
As of October 12, here are the number of registered voters in each of the three qualified parties of Kansas: Republican 865,387; Democratic 509,048; Libertarian 20,353; independent and miscellaneous 524,195.
The percentages are: Republican 45.10%; Democratic 26.53%; Libertarian 1.06%; independent and miscellaneous 27.32%.
In February 2020, the percentages were: Republican 43.78%; Democratic 24.85%; Libertarian .99%; independent and miscellaneous 30.38%.
This is the first time that any party other than the Republican or Democratic Parties has had registration above 1% of the total since 1973, when all parts of Kansas first required voter registration. Before 1973, each county decided for itself whether to require voter registration or not. Thus before 1973 there are no official, complete registration tallies for the entire state.
The Washington Post-ABC News Poll released on October 12 asked respondents about four presidential candidates. See this story.
The Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE) is a 35-year-old loose coalition of most of the nation’s nationally-organized minor parties. It frequently helps fund ballot access lawsuits. Most recently, it donated $1,500 to the lawsuit filed by Don Blankenship against the California independent presidential petition requirement of 196,964 signatures, to be collected entirely during the period of the health crisis, April through August. That case should have won, but it did not.
Now COFOE wishes to help fund the cert petition for Buscemi v Bell, the case involving the North Carolina independent presidential petition deadline of March 3, 2020. In a shocking decision in July 2020, the Fourth Circuit upheld that deadline, notwithstanding that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down early petition deadlines for independent presidential candidates in Anderson v Celebrezze in 1983. In August 2020 the Fourth Circuit refused to reconsider.
COFOE obtains all its income from readers of this blog. Please consider making a donation to COFOE. If you donate at least $25, you get a free one-year subscription to the print edition of Ballot Access News. Send any checks to COFOE, PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147. The November 1 print issue of Ballot Access News will contain a chart showing the number of legislative candidates nominated by each political party, by state, including the Democratic and Republican Parties, and the number of independent candidates in each state. It will also contain the amount of money donated to each political party on state income tax forms during 2020, for the states that have a check-off for political parties on state income tax returns. It will also contain a chart showing the number of registered voters in each party, in each state, if the data can be obtained in time. If not, the registration data will be in the December 1 issue. This type of information is not available from any other publication. If you read this blog, but have never contributed to COFOE, please consider making such a donation.
