Miami Herald In-Depth Story About Florida Gubernatorial Candidates Other than Democrat and Republican

Posted on by October 23, 2018
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This Miami Herald story describes the candidates who are on the ballot for Governor of Florida, other than the Democratic and Republican nominees. The story puts Darcy Richardson at the top. He is the only minor party nominee running, and is the nominee of the Reform Party. There also three independents on the ballot. As the story makes plain, only two of them have any real campaign activity.

Florida law says the major party nominees are listed first on the ballot, followed by the nominees of other parties, and then followed by independent candidates. Independent candidates have the ballot label “NPA”. The Democratic Party filed a lawsuit earlier this year over the law that says the party that won the last gubernatorial election is listed first. However, polls suggest that the Democratic nominee will win this election, in which case the Democratic Party will probably dismiss the lawsuit.

There are no minor party or independent candidates on the Florida ballot for U.S. Senate.

Georgia is Facing At Least Five Federal Voting Rights Lawsuits, Some of them Time-Urgent

Posted on by October 22, 2018
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The Georgia Secretary of State is defending at least five voting rights lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Atlanta:

1. Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda v Kemp, 1:18cv-4727, has a hearing on October 29. This is the case over Georgia’s slow pace of processing voter registration applications, when there is a tiny discrepancy between information on the application and information already in state databases.

2. Georgia Muslim Voter Project v Kemp, 1:18cv-4789, has a hearing on October 23. This ACLU lawsuit challenges Georgia’s procedure when an application for an absentee ballot is received, and the election official believes the signature on the application doesn’t match the signature on the voter registration form. Although the law requires the applicant to be informed, there is no requirement that the applicant be informed in time to do anything about the problem.

3. Martin v Kemp, 1:18cv-4776, has a hearing on October 23. This lawsuit challenges state procedures when a mail ballot is received and the signature on the outer envelope doesn’t seem to match the signature on the voter registration form. As is the case for absentee ballot applications, the election official is required to notify the voter that the ballot has been rejected, but there is no requirement that this be done timely.

4. Cowen v Kemp, 1:17cv-4660. This is the Libertarian Party ballot access challenge to the 5% petition for U.S. House candidates. This case will not be settled until 2019. Georgia attorneys have been so busy with other election law cases, they have postponed depositions in the ballot access case three times, and new deposition dates still aren’t set.

5. Curling v Kemp, 1:17cv-2989. This is the case that challenges the vote-counting machines for not having a paper audit trail. Although it won’t be settled in time for the 2018 election, the plaintiffs are pressing for an expedited process.

Harvard Political Review Article on Problems of Independent Candidates

Posted on by October 21, 2018
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This article in Harvard Political Review discusses the problems faced by independent candidates. It suggests ranked-choice voting and a fair policy by the news media would help them. The Harvard Political Review is a quarterly publication of the Harvard Institute of Politics, and has existed in 1969. All its articles are written by Harvard undergraduates.