On September 4, the challengers to the Pennsylvania statewide Green Party petition acknowledged that the petition does have enough valid signatures. But the challengers still insist that Howie Hawkins can’t be on the ballot, because they say the stand-in presidential and vice-presidential candidates did not do all the necessary paperwork. That challenge will be heard on Labor Day, Monday, September 7, at 1 p.m.

This means that the three Green Party candidates for statewide state office will be on the ballot. The offices are Auditor, Treasurer, and Attorney General. Thanks to Dan Mohn for this news.

The September 3 Arizona court ruling, saying an independent presidential candidate must not be registered into a ballot-qualified party, is unprecedented. Never before in history has any presidential candidate been kept off any ballot (general election ballot, or presidential primary ballot) on the basis of his or her voter registration partisan choice.

In general elections, even major party presidential nominees have sometimes qualified as independent candidates. Harry Truman qualified as an independent presidential candidate in 1948 in Louisiana and Mississippi, because the Democratic Parties of those states refused to list him on the general election ballot. If the Arizona 2020 Kanye West decision had been applied to Truman, Truman could not have been on the ballot in those states. Truman would have also qualified as an independent in Alabama, but he missed the May 1948 deadline. South Carolina at the time did not have government-printed ballots, but if it had, Truman would have tried to qualify in South Carolina as well.

In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower qualified as an independent presidential candidate in Mississippi. He was listed twice, both as an independent and as a Republican. Mississippi permits fusion. Eisenhower got far more votes as an independent than as a Republican.

In 1968, Hubert Humphrey qualified as the nominee of two minor parties in Alabama, because the Alabama Democratic Party wouldn’t put him on the ballot.

On September 1, some Illinois Republican Party activists filed a state court lawsuit to remove William Redpath from the ballot. Redpath is the Libertarian nominee for U.S. House, 6th district. His petition was challenged earlier this year, but the administrative body that hears ballot access petitions ruled that Redpath’s petition has enough valid signatures.

The lawsuit alleges that Redpath does not have enough signatures, if people who signed his petition and who had already voted in the March 2020 primary are not counted. There is no Illinois law that says primary voters can’t sign for an independent candidate or the nominee of an unqualified party. But the lawsuit alleges that this requirement is “implicit”. The case is Bixler v Illinois State Board of Elections, 2020MR775, Sangamon County Circuit Court.

Illinois law once did provide that primary voters could not sign for an independent candidate, but that law was repealed in 1975.