As of noon, September 28, the Florida Supreme Court still had not acted on whether to remove certain statewide ballot measures. The Gainesville Sun here calls on the Court to remove the measures, for violating the same-subject rule in a gross manner.
On April 28, police for the city of Meriden, Connecticut, prevented Libertarian Party petitioners from working in a city public park at a well-attended Daffodil Festival. The party was working to get 7,500 valid signatures for its statewide slate of candidates. The party sued, and the city has now settled the lawsuit by paying the party $37,000. See this story.
On September 26, the final brief was filed in the Ninth Circuit in Merritt v Padilla, 18-55457. This is the case over Paul Merritt’s statement in the California Voters Handbook. For a large fee, candidates for statewide office are permitted to write a statement about their candidacy, which is printed in the book that is mailed to every registered voter. In 2016, Paul Merritt, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate, paid for a candidate statement and referred to himself as an “Independent candidate.” He is not registered into any party, so he is an independent.
The Secretary of State deleted the “independent candidate” words from the title of Merritt’s statement, without even telling him. He only found out when his county election official informed him. Yet the U.S. District Court ruled in favor of the Secretary of State, so Merritt is appealing.
The Connecticut Secretary of State has determined that Fred Linck, the Socialist Action candidate for U.S. Senate, failed to obtain 7,500 valid signatures. The state says he is about 670 signatures short. The party showed numerous serious errors in the validation process, and if more time had been available, might have been able to show that it did have enough valid signatures.
On September 14, the New York State Board of Elections posted its list of U.S. House candidates. However, since then, the Board has made thirteen changes in the list, because parties in New York state, to a degree unseen in any other state, may make last-minute changes. Most of the changes are because many nominees of the Women’s Equality Party have been deleted. They were all nominees of other parties anyway. The Women’s Equality Party still has one U.S. House nominee who is not the nominee of any other party; she is Kate M. Browning in the First District. Here is the list of changes.
The original list had four Working Families Party nominees who were not nominees of any other party. But in the 19th and 21st districts, the WF nominee is no longer running, and the party has instead nominated the Democratic nominee. The two Working Families nominees in the state who are not also the nominees of the Democratic Party are now Kate Browning in the First District, and incumbent Congressman Joseph Crowley in the 14th district. He had lost the Democratic primary to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Working Families Party would rather have nominated Ocasio-Cortez also, if it had known she was going to win the Democratic primary in June. But they are stuck with Congressman Crowley, since he won’t withdraw as the WF nominee.
The original list had six Reform Party nominees who were not the nominees of any other party, but one of them, James Dillon in the 14th district, has been removed, so now the Reform Party has five nominees who are not the nominees of any other party. This is still more nominees than any other third party, except the Green Party also has five nominees. There are three Conservatives who are not the nominees of any other party, and one Independence nominee who is not the nominee of any other party.
