Heath Haussamen, editor and publisher of NM Politics.net, has this editorial, opposing the straight-ticket device for New Mexico. Thanks to Rick Lass for the link.
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The Florida Democratic Party is suing over the Florida law that says the party that won the governorship in the last gubernatorial election enjoys the top spot on the general election ballot. However, the party and the Secretary of State recently jointly agreed to hold the case in abeyance until after the November election. Probably the Democratic Party will abandon this case after the election if it wins the Florida governorship.
On September 4, attorneys for the Michigan Secretary of State asked the Sixth Circuit to remove Chris Graveline from the ballot. Graveline is the independent candidate for Attorney General who won injunctive relief on August 27, against the mid-July petition deadline and the requirement that he collect 30,000 signatures. Here is the state’s brief.
Graveline’s response is due September 5 at 5 p.m. Michigan time.
The state’s brief says that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld California’s independent petition requirement in Storer v Brown in 1974. This is not true. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t decide whether California’s independent candidate petition requirements were too difficult or not, and remanded the case back to the lower court to gather more evidence. But the U.S. Supreme Court did say in Storer v Brown that petition requirements that are seldom used are probably unconstitutional. Attorneys for California told the California legislature that they did not believe they could win the Storer case on remand, and asked the California legislature to ease the requirement, which the legislature did in 1976.
The state’s brief does not even attempt to defend the petition deadline. Case law almost unanimously agrees that non-presidential independent petition deadlines cannot be earlier than a state’s primary.
On September 4, the North Dakota recount for the June primary, for Secretary of State, was completed. Roland Riemers had sought the recount because the law required him to poll 300 votes, and the original count showed him with only 247. The recount only netted him one more vote. See this story.
Riemers asked the state to also include votes for him, for voters who voted for him and no one else for Secretary of State, but who also cast votes in the Democratic or Republican primaries for other offices. This is physically possible because the three party primary ballots are all on the same piece of paper. But the state refused to count those votes.
The Connecticut Secretary of State has determined that the Libertarian statewide petition has enough valid signatures. Although the party was automatically on already for U.S. Senate, it wasn’t for any of the state statewide offices, and they needed a petition of 7,500 signatures.
This will be the first time the Libertarian Party has been on for Governor of Connecticut since 1998. If any of the statewide candidates get as much as 1% in November, then the party will be on for that same office in 2022. Each office has its own 1% vote test.