The Arkansas Libertarian Party has between 2,000 and 3,000 signatures on its party petition so far. Thanks to Paul Frankel for this news.
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The Nation, venerable weekly magazine published in New York, regularly carries a column by Eric Alterman. The April 15 column mentions that Bernie Sanders was a presidential elector candidate for the Socialist Workers Party in 1980, in Vermont. Although this had not been a complete secret, it is rare that this fact has been mentioned in a publication with wide readership. The general thrust of the column is that voters who want the Democratic Party to win the presidential election of 2020 should not support making Sanders the Democratic nominee. Alterman describes the Socialist Workers Party in 1980 as “Trotskyist” and says in 1980 “it favored the abolition of the U.S. military budget and proclaimed itself in solidarity with both Cuba and Iran at a time when the latter held over 52 Americans hostage.”
On April 11, Central Jersey Progressive Democrats filed a lawsuit in state court to overturn a state law that requires that county organizations of qualified parties have an equal number of male and female committee members. The lawsuit is filed in Superior Court in Middlesex County. The law has existed since 1947, but is not enforced in all counties. See this story.
On April 8, the Democratic Party filed this brief in Jacobson v Ertel, n.d., 4:18cv-262. This is the case over the Florida law that says the party that won the most recent gubernatorial election will always have the top line on the ballot for its nominees for all offices. The Democratic Party has not elected the Governor of Florida since 1994, and it hopes to win this case so that in future general elections, a random procedure will decide which candidates will be listed first.
The state government filed its brief on April 8 as well. It says that rotating the names of candidates in any particular election would be too complicated, but it says nothing about the alternate idea of having a random drawing each election to decide ballot order. The state also says that the Democratic Party has never before filed a lawsuit against any other state on this issue, and notes that in certain other states with the same type of law, the Democratic Party benefits. And the state claims that this law has existed since 1970 and the statute of limitations means that if the party didn’t like the law, it should have filed its lawsuit before 1975. And the state belittles the idea that ballot position makes any difference.
On April 11, the Ninth Circuit heard De La Fuente v Wyman, 18-35208, in Seattle. Here is a link to the video, which lasts 48 minutes. Washington has one of the nation’s oddest
ballot access procedures. The state requires 1,000 valid signatures. They can only be collected at locations that have been named in a newspaper notice. The candidate must place the notice at least ten days before he or she starts to petition.
The state allows petitioning at multiple locations, but each location must collect at least 100 valid signatures, or none of the signatures count. The state law refers to this process as an assemblage of electors, but that is a very misleading phrase, because what really happens is a petitioning process, not a meeting.
De La Fuente was kept off the ballot in November 2016 because by the time he started petitioning, it was less than ten days before the deadline, so there was no possibility of running a newspaper notice at least ten days before starting to petition. He challenged the requirement that the notice be placed at least ten days before the election. Although he failed to get injunctive relief, after the election the U.S. District Court declared the newspaper notice to be unconstitutional, because it didn’t serve any state interest. The state then appealed to the Ninth Circuit. The three judges are William Fletcher, Consuelo Callahan, and Morgan Christen. The very last question in the hearing was by Judge Callahan. She asked if a single newspaper notice could say that the petitioners are going to be at a particular location, but on many particular dates in the future. The attorney for the state said that is permitted.