The Delaware Election Commission has posted a candidate list, although it does not include Democrats or Republicans for office other than president, because their primaries haven’t been held yet. For president, only the nominees of the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian and Green Parties will be on the ballot, unless the nominee of the American Delta Party is able to prevail. The Independent Party is also ballot-qualified but it chose not to run anyone for president, although it is active this year and has nominees for many other offices.

No statewide independent petition has succeeded in Delaware since 1992, when Ross Perot qualified. The law requires 7,118 signatures, due July 15.

No new parties qualified in Delaware this year.

The American Delta Party is ballot-qualified and wants to run Rocky De La Fuente for president, but the party was late with some of its presidential elector paperwork. The Delaware law is discriminatory and requires qualified minor parties (which nominate by convention) to certify their nominees before the Democratic and Republican Parties are required to do so. The Delaware Elections Commission is considering whether to rule that the American Delta Party should be allowed to put its nominee on the ballot.

On August 21, the National Republican Congressional Committee filed a lawsuit in Texas Court of Appeals to remove the Libertarian congressional candidates from the ballot if they hadn’t paid a filing fee. At the same time, the Texas House Republican Caucus PAC filed a parallel lawsuit to remove the Libertarian candidates for state office who had not paid a filing fee.

Whether the filing fee for convention parties is constitutional is still pending in another lawsuit in Texas state court.

On August 25, the Texas Court of Appeals in Austin rejected the Republican lawsuits, which are numbers o3-20-421-cv and 03-20-422-cv. On the evening of August 26, the Republicans appealed to the State Supreme Court.

This year, there will be one independent, two Libertarians, and one Green on the Illinois ballot for U.S. House. Illinois has 18 districts. This paltry number of candidates shows that the normal Illinois requirements for U.S. House are far too severe. This year, the requirement was only 10% of the normal statutory requirement of 5% of the last vote cast. Even reducing the requirements to only 10% of normal still resulted in just four candidates.

Furthermore, the Green was not required to petition, because under the court order that limited petitions to 10%, minor parties that had been on the ballot in either of the two previous election in the same U.S. House district did not need any petition. The Greens have had qualified party status in the Fifth District in every election starting with 2008.

The four candidates are independent Tracy Jennings in the Seventh District, Libertarians Bill Redpath (6th district) and Preston Gabriel Nelson (8th district), and Green Thomas J. Wilda in the Fifth District. Redpath was challenged but he survived the challenge. Jennings and Nelson were not challenged.