Michigan’s November 2018 ballot will be the first government-printed ballot in Michigan history not to have a straight-ticket device, and also the first such ballot in history not to have party logos. A logo is a cartoon showing the symbol for each particular party.
See the November 2018 ballot at this link. Scroll down. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
Earlier this year, the South Dakota petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties, which was in late March, was held unconstitutionally early in U.S. District Court. The case was Libertarian Party of South Dakota v Krebs, civ 4:15cv-4111. According to a federal law passed in 1976, when plaintiffs sue a state over voting rights (including ballot access), and win, the state must pay the attorney fees for the plaintiffs.
South Dakota did not appeal the 2018 decision, striking down the deadline, but it did contest the amount of attorneys fees that plaintiffs claimed for their attorneys, who are on the staff of the ACLU. On October 2, 2018, the U.S. District Court adjudicated the proper amount of attorney fees to be $612,045. The case lasted three years and was made especially complicated because, twice, the state partially liberalized the law while the lawsuit was underway. Every time the law changed, the issues changed and new briefs were needed.
During the lawsuit, the state had relaxed the new party petition deadline from March to July, but only if the new party were only interested in running for president and the lesser statewide executive positions. In the end, though, the deadline was held unconstitutional also for parties that wanted to run for Congress, legislature, and Governor. Here is the 10-page decision explaining the basis for the amount of filing fees. The state had argued that if the plaintiffs (the Libertarian and Constitution Parties) had chosen attorneys who reside in South Dakota, the award of attorney fees would have been much lower, because attorneys inside South Dakota charge much lower hourly rates than in the states in which the two ACLU attorneys live. But the judge declared that it was reasonable for the plaintiffs to hire experts from outside South Dakota, because the case was very complicated. Thanks to Kurt Evans for this news.
On the evening of October 3, the Working Families Party state committee nominated Andrew Cuomo for Governor. See this story.
The Maryland Green Party has 13 candidates on the ballot this year for Maryland legislature. That is the most such candidates the party has ever run. Maryland only has legislative elections in midterm years. In 2002, the party had three candidates for the legislature; in 2006 it had eight; in 2010 it did not have any; in 2014 it had one.
The only other minor party on the ballot in Maryland, the Libertarian Party, has five legislative candidates this year.
Although the Constitution Party is ballot-qualified in South Dakota, it has no nominees on the November 2018 ballot because it has two factions, each of which chose its own nominees in separate conventions. After a state court refused to adjudicate the internal dispute, one faction went to federal court, and the other faction intervened. But for many procedural reasons, the federal court also declined relief. Here is the opinion in Johnson and Hubbel v Krebs, 4:18cv-4108, issued October 1. The case had been filed on August 29. Thanks to Kurt Evans for the link.
