Vermont requires presidential primary candidates to submit a petition of 1,000 signatures. The deadline is not until December 15, 2019. So far, three presidential primary candidate petitions have been checked: in the Republican primary, President Trump and Rocky De La Fuente; in the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders. See the list here.
Law Professor Vikram David Amar has this commentary on Verdict about California’s tax returns-ballot law, which was enjoined last month by a U.S. District Court. Amar says that now that he has read the opinion, he is more certain than ever that the California law is constitutional. He says that the U.S. Constitution lets states impose any barriers to presidential candidacies that they wish, because the states have complete control over how to choose presidential electors (unless the states discriminate on the basis of race, sex, class, or age).
That viewpoint ignores the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court, and numerous other courts, have struck down state ballot access laws affecting presidential candidates. Amar only mentions one of them, Anderson v Celebrezze, and grudgingly admits that perhaps states do not have complete control over qualification deadlines.
But courts have also struck down presidential candidate ballot access laws that required too many signatures, or a county-based distribution requirement, or that required presidential candidates to have chosen their vice-presidential running mates when they start petitioning, or which required a loyalty oath, or a requirement that the presidential candidate not be a felon. They have also struck down laws that required the selection of presidential elector candidates early in the process, or which restricted who could circulate a presidential petition, or which completely banned independent candidacies, or which made the requirements more onerous in the middle of the petitioning season.
As a courtesy to Professor Amar, I posted a comment under his article eight hours ago, but the web page that hosts his article has not posted my comment yet.
On October 10, the minor parties in the lawsuit Miller v Hughs asked the U.S. District Court to enjoin the new law requiring minor party candidates to pay filing fees, at least as applied to the 2020 election. First, the brief argues that the plain language of the new law says the filing fee requirement only applies to convention nominees, yet the Secretary of State is interpreting it to apply to everyone who might want to be nominated at a convention. Second, the brief argues that it violates due process to impose the new law for the 2020 election, because the details of how the new law works have only been public for a few months. Third, the brief argues that the filing fees for convention parties are unconstitutional anyway because the only legitimate purpose of filing fees is to keep ballots uncrowded, and there are no primary ballots for convention parties.
Here is the 11-page brief. Following that are affidavits that support the arguments.
Now that the American Independent Party has saved its spot on the California ballot as a result of Governor Gavin Newsom’s veto of SB 696, it will have a presidential primary, as it always does. J. R. Myers, presidential nominee of the Life & Liberty Party, and Phil Collins, nominee of the Prohibition Party, have asked the American Independent Party to be listed on that party’s presidential primary ballot. That primary is March 3, 2020.
Las Cruces, New Mexico, is using ranked choice voting for its city election for the first time. See this story.
