August 3 was the Pennsylvania deadline for minor party and independent candidate petitions. Both the Green Party and the Libertarian Party submitted more than twice as many signatures as were required. The requirement was 5,000. Libertarians submitted slightly over 10,000, and Greens submitted approximately 15,000.
On August 5, the Ohio independent presidential deadline, Kanye West submitted a petition. It has 14,886 signatures, and 5,000 are needed.
On August 4, the Trump for President committee and the Republican National Committee filed a federal lawsuit against the new Nevada law on postal balloting. Donald J. Trump for President v Cegavske, 2:20cv-1445. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Kent J. Dawson, a Clinton appointee.
The lawsuit does not attack everything in the new law, which was signed on August 3 and which takes effect immediately. It challenges the part of the new law that says postal ballots without a postmark are deemed to have been mailed by election day if the ballot arrives by the Friday after election day. The Complaint says that this will permit some postal voters to vote the day after the election, and that Congress has already established that election day is on Tuesday.
The lawsuit challenges the disparity in the number of vote centers in various counties. Voter centers are places where voters can vote, if they would rather not vote by mail, or if they want to hand their postal ballot directly to election officials. The lawsuit says the new rule on vote centers discriminates against certain rural counties.
The lawsuit challenges the new law’s provision that if a postal ballot envelope arrives at the office of the election officials with two voted ballots inside, the local election officials have discretion to decide if both ballots should be counted, or whether to invalidate both ballots. Presumably the legislature was anticipating that in many households with two voters, the two voters might decide to enclose both of their ballots inside the same envelope, and presumably both voters would sign the outside of the envelope. The lawsuit says that county discretion is too great, and therefore the standards are not equal across the state.
Finally, the lawsuit challenges the new law for giving county election officials too much discretion over how to tally ballots. Here is the Complaint.
On August 5, U.S. District Court Judge Emily C. Marks, a Trump appointee, upheld the Alabama practice of giving a free list of the registered voters to the qualified parties, but not to parties that are petitioning. Libertarian Party of Alabama v Merrill, m.d., 2:19cv-69. Here is the 24-page opinion. The Libertarian Party, or any petitioning party, would need to pay the state approximately $36,000 to obtain the list.
The ruling contradicts a summary affirmance of the U.S. Supreme Court, Socialist Workers Party v Rockefeller, 314 F.Supp. 984 (s.d. N.Y. 1970), 400 U.S. 173 (1970). Footnote four mentions this case but says summary affirmances are only binding when they cover “the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions.” That is correct, but in this case, the issues in both cases were precisely the same. In the New York 1970 case, the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Labor Party were about to petition to get on the New York ballot. They filed the lawsuit in order to get the free list of registered voters, to help them with their petition drives, which at the time required 12,000 signatures. They won the case and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed it. Judge Marks did not explain why she thinks the issues in that case were different than the issues in the current Libertarian case.
As to all the other uncontradicted precedents on the side of the Libertarian Party, Judge Marks said they aren’t binding in her court (none of them was from a state in the Eleventh Circuit). It is very likely that the Alabama Libertarian Party will appeal.
Judge Marks said the state interest in not providing the list are “a proprietary interest in receiving compensation for taxpayers, distinguishing parties with a modicum of support before turning over proprietary information, administrative ease of determining which groups are entitled to the list, maintaining stability of the political system by only providing lists to parties with support in the electorate, not subsidizing entities that consider themselves to be political parties but are more like interest groups, limiting demands on the elections divisoin staff, increasing the number of entities required to pay for proprietary information, not subsidizing groups engaged in political satire, and not facilitating fraud.”
On August 4, Stephen “Marshall” Wilson, an independent state legislator who is running for Governor of West Virginia, filed a federal lawsuit for ballot access relief due to the health crisis. He needed 7,139 signatures and he submitted 7,200 on the August 3 deadline, but the Secretary of State the next day determined he did not have enough signatures.
Wilson v Justice, s.d., 2:20cv-526. Wilson had repeatedly asked for ballot access relief. The Secretary of State, Mac Warner, said he was favorable to granting some relief, but that he could not act without the approval of Governor Jim Justice. Of course, Wilson is running against Governor Justice. Here is the Complaint. UPDATE: the case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Thomas E. Johnston, a Bush Jr. appointee.
Wilson had been re-elected to the legislature in 2018 as a Republican, but on December 17, 2019, he had changed his affiliation to independent. If he gets on the ballot, he will be the first independent candidate for Governor of West Virginia on the ballot since 1920.
Ironically, Governor Justice had also switched partisan affiliation after his last election. He was elected as a Democrat in 2016 but he switched to Republican on August 3, 2017.
