On May 28, the New York deadline for independent candidate petitions, Diane Sare submitted 70,000 signatures to meet the requirement of 45,000 signatures. She also petitioned successfully for U.S. Senate in 2022. Her ballot label is “LaRouche.” Thanks to Darcy Richardson for this news.
On May 25, the Alliance Party, which is ballot-qualified in South Carolina, nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for president. In 2020 the party had nominated Rocky De La Fuente for president. In 2016 it had nominated Peter Skewes for president. When the party first qualified in 2016, it was named the American Party, but in 2018 had changed its name to the Alliance Party.
South Carolina has more ballot-qualified parties than any state except Florida. Although the petition requirement to create a new party in South Carolina is not easy, the retention law is very easy. A party can stay on the ballot indefinitely as long as it nominates at least one candidate for any partisan office every four years.
On May 31, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced that he has changed his registration from Democratic to independent. He is not running for re-election this year, nor is he running for anything else.
There are now four independents in the U.S. Senate, the most ever since the beginning of popular elections for U.S. Senators. Oddly, there are no independents in the U.S. House.
On May 30, the Ohio House passed HB 2, which moves the deadline for qualified parties to certify their presidential and vice-presidential nominees from 90 days before the election to 65 days before. It also passed HB 1, which bans foreigners from spending money to influence initiative campaigns.
The bill easing the deadline applies to all future elections, but it only applies in years when a qualified party asks for the later deadline in advance.
On May 28, the Senate had passed a bill making both the deadline change and the campaign finance change. That bill is HB 271. Because that bill is not identical to the bills passed by the House, no bill has yet passed the entire legislature.
On May 30, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla, an Obama appointee, struck down the New York law that makes it a crime for anyone to give food, drink, or tobacco to any voter standing in line at the polls on election day. The Brooklyn Branch of the NAACP v Kosinski, s.d., 1:21cv-7667.
Here is the opinion, which is based on the free speech part of the First Amendment. Testimony showed that people who want to give food or drinks to people in line mean to convey the message that voting is important and that the voters waiting patiently should be encouraged. The decision says that there have been elections in which voters waited as long as five hours in order to vote.
The decision also says that New York’s defense of the law is inherently contradictory. On the one hand the state argued that the law isn’t generally enforced, but on the other hand the state insisted the law is necessary. The case had been filed in 2021 and has a considerable amount of evidence. Thanks to DemocracyDocket for the link.
