On August 22, a Guam voter filed a federal lawsuit against the Guam rules for independent candidates to appear on the general election ballot. McNinch v Guam, 1:25cv-34. In Guam, independent candidates must run in the primary, and must poll the lesser of the number of signatures needed to have appeared on the primary ballot, or 4% of the number of voters who voted in the primary. The plaintiff does not allege that he wants to run for any particular office. He is not an attorney and has no attorney representing him. Here is the Complaint.
In Erum v Cayetano, the Ninth Circuit upheld a somewhat similar Hawaii law, which requires independent candidates to run in the primary. They must poll the lesser of the number of votes received by any primary winner running for the same office, or 10% of the number of voters who participated in the primary. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds, because Hawaii always has several minor parties on the ballot. Typically, a Hawaii independent candidate can outpoll a minor party candidate running for the same office in that minor party’s primary. Sometimes an independent candidate in Hawaii will recruit a friend to file for the same office in a minor party primary. Then the friend does not campaign and polls a very small primary vote, so the independent has a good chance of exceeding his or her friend’s vote. Erum v Cayetano also says that any voter has standing to challenge a ballot access law.