On October 30, a New York state trial court denied the Reform Party an injunction, in the party’s lawsuit over the order of parties on the ballot in New York city. See this story. The party will appeal. The main reason for the outcome is that it was too late to do anything about the problem.
Mississippi has two U.S. Senate elections this year. The full-term race is a partisan race, but the special election for the other seat is a non-partisan race, with no party labels and no party nominees. In the special election, there are two Republicans running and two Democrats running, with a runoff if no one gets a majority in November.
Here is the November 2018 ballot, which has the US Senate full term race listed first, followed by the special election for the other seat. The two Republicans are appointed incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith and Chris McDaniel. The two Democrats are Mike Espy and Tobey Bernard Bartee.
This year the Tennessee November ballot has 28 candidates for Governor. There is one Republican, one Democrat, and 26 with the label “independent.” This is the largest number of candidates ever printed on a U.S. general election ballot for a statewide office, in a regularly-scheduled election. See the ballot here. The first page, the second page, and the third page, have nothing but gubernatorial candidates.
The chief reason there are so many is that the Tennessee Libertarian Party wanted to publicize how silly the state’s ballot access laws are. The state only requires 25 signatures for an independent candidate, but 33,844 signatures for a newly-qualifying party. So the party qualified 15 Libertarians to run as independents for Governor. There is also a Green Party candidate who qualified as an independent, and the remaining 10 are actual independents. The Green is Yvonne Neubert. The Libertarians are Sherry Clark, Justin Cornett, Gabriel Fancher, Sean Fleming, William Helmstetter, Cory King, Matthew Koch, Alfred Rapoza, Heather Scott, George Smith, Jeremy Stephenson, Tracy Tisdale, Mike Toews, Vinnie Vinyard, and Jaron Weidner.
In 2016, the Utah legislature amended the election law to require that independent candidates must have this message underneath their names on the ballot: “This candidate is not affiliated with, or does not qualify to be listed on the ballot as affiliated with a political party.”
There is only one independent candidate for any federal or state office on the Utah ballot this year. She is Marsha Holland, running for State House, district 73. She is the only opponent of the incumbent Republican. She has raised more money than her opponent. On November 2, she filed a federal lawsuit against the law requiring that ballot label for independent candidates. She does not ask for injunctive relief, but she says she intends to run in 2020 as well, and she asks that the label be declared unconstitutional. Here is her six-page Complaint. Holland v Cox, 4:18cv-74. The case is assigned to Judge David Nuffer, an Obama appointee.
Her complaint says that she has learned from multiple sources that when voters see that label, they believe it means it is saying she is not qualified to be elected. Here is a news story about her lawsuit, showing a picture of the ballot.
The California independent presidential petition in 2020 will be 196,964 valid signatures, to be collected in 105 days, unless the Ninth Circuit strikes down the law in De La Fuente v Padilla, 17-56668. The requirement is 1% of the number of registered voters as of the close of registration for the November 2018 election.
No other state has ever required so many signatures for an independent presidential candidate in U.S. history. However, before 1969, Ohio had no procedures for an independent presidential candidate to get on the ballot.
