Comparing Qualified Party Status for Libertarian, Green and Constitution Parties, Relative to Four Years Ago

Posted on by November 8, 2018
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Libertarian Party: compared to the day after the November 2014 election, has gained qualified status in D.C., Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, and Oklahoma. Compared to November 2014, it has lost status in Alaska, Maryland, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. In Alaska, it only got 1.84% for Governor, and 3% was required. In Maryland, it only got .57% for Governor, and 1% was required. In North Dakota it didn’t have any statewide candidates on the ballot. UPDATE: it appears the Ohio Libertarian Party is still ballot-qualified, even though it did not receive as much as 3% for Governor in November 2018. The law says when a party petitions, it remains on the ballot until the first election that is at least a year later than the date the petition was approved.

Green Party: compared to the day after the November 2014 election, has gained qualified status in Missouri and North Carolina. Compared to the same day in 2014, it has lost qualified status in Arizona, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin (although the party was not on in Arizona for the 2014 election, it had already submitted its party petition as of election day 2014).

Constitution party: compared to the day after the November 2014 election, has gained qualified status in North Carolina, and did not lose it anywhere. This post originally erroneously said that the party lost qualified status in New Mexico.

Florida Lawsuit on Order of Candidates on the Ballot

Posted on by November 7, 2018
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Florida law puts the nominees of the party that last won the governorship on the top line on the ballot. On August 15, 2018, the Democratic Party had filed a lawsuit to overturn this law. Presumably if the lawsuit wins, some random procedure would be used to determine ballot order of candidates. But on August 15, 2018, the Democratic Party asked the court to hold the lawsuit in abeyance until November 30, 2018. Presumably the Democratic Party expected to win the Florida gubernatorial election this year, and in that case would not have pursued the lawsuit.

However, the Republican Party won the Florida gubernatorial election of November 2018. Presumably the case will now be revived. The Democratic Party hasn’t elected a Governor of Florida since 1994.

The 2018 margin was only about 50,000 votes. Research on the advantage of listing candidates first suggests that if the Democrats had been listed first, the winner might have been different. Here is a link to the preliminary returns.