Connecticut State Senator Marilyn Moore is running for Mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The election is November 5, 2019. She wanted the Working Families Party nomination, but the Working Families Party was not ballot-qualified for that office, so she had to obtain 207 valid signatures from any registered voter to place the WFP on the ballot for that office this year. According to this story, she only had 168 valid signatures.
Dan Walters, who has been one of California’s longest-serving political reporters and commentators, here comments on last week’s State Court of Appeals decision that said the legislature acted illegally when it authorized public funding for campaigns in 2016.
On September 6, a recall petition for California Governor Gavin Newsom began to circulate. Here is the petition, which has a brief statement of why the petition is being circulated. It does not mention Newsom’s having signed the bill to keep President Donald Trump’s name off the Republican presidential primary ballot. Thanks to Michael Cowles for the link.
Minnesota has four ballot-qualified parties. The two minor parties are the Legal Marijuana Now Party and the Grassroots-Legalize Marijuana Party. In Minnesota, all ballot-qualified parties nominate by primary.
Minnesota generally has secret open primaries. That means primary voters choose which party’s primary to vote in, in the privacy of the voting booth. However, Minnesota’s new presidential primary has different rules. Both the national Democratic and national Republican Parties don’t allow secret open presidential primaries, so the Minnesota 2020 presidential primary provides that voters must ask for a particular presidential primary ballot, and the qualified parties receive a list of the voters and which ballot they chose.
Presumably the two minor parties won’t ask for their own presidential primaries. However, even if they don’t, the Secretary of State has ruled that all four parties will receive the voter lists. The Democratic Party of Minnesota feels that parties that don’t actually hold a presidential primary should not get the lists. See this article. Thanks to David Sturrock for the link.
On September 10, the independent candidates who are challenging the North Carolina ballot access laws for independent candidates filed a brief in support of injunctive relief. The plaintiffs are Greg Buscemi, who is an independent candidate for U.S. House, and Kyle Kopitke, an independent candidate for president.
North Carolina drastically improved its ballot access laws for new and previously unqualified parties in 2017, but the independent candidate requirements are still very severe. The petitions are due in March of election years, and the number of signatures for a statewide independent is approximately six times the number required for new party petitions.
The lawsuit is Buscemi and Kopitke v Bell, e.d., 7:19cv-164. Here is the brief. The lawsuit also attacks the state law that requires write-in candidates to file a petition in order to have their write-ins counted.
