On October 17, U.S. District Court Judge John M. Gerrard, an Obama appointee, issued an order in Lauters v Evnen, 4:24cv-03175. It denies the request of Shiva Ayyadurai to be placed on the Nebraska ballot as an independent presidential candidate. The petition had enough valid signatures, but he was kept off the ballot because he was born in India.

The decision says that the March 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision Trump v Anderson only pertains to the “Insurrection clause” of the 14th amendment, but the Nebraska decision does not quote from Trump v Anderson, and if one reads Trump v Anderson carefully, it does not limit its holding to that part of the Constitution.

On October 23, the New York Times ran this story about some minor party and independent presidential candidates. It features Cornel West, Jill Stein, Chase Oliver, and Claudia De la Cruz, in that order.

But the story fails to say that New York state is the only state in which no minor party or independent candidates are on the presidential ballot, even though the national Libertarian Party sent out a press release about this a week earlier. In fact, it appears no general media in New York state have mentioned this startling fact.

The New York Times story is also odd because it doesn’t mention Randall Terry, the Constitution Party nominee. Although he is only on the ballot in twelve states (whereas Cornel West is on in fifteen states), the states in which Terry is on the ballot have more voters than the states in which West is on the ballot.

The California deadline for filing as a write-in candidate has closed. The only presidential candidate who qualified is Peter Sonski, nominee of the American Solidarity Party. Califoria recently made it even more difficult to qualify as a declared write-in for president, by requiring not only 54 presidential elector candidates, but also 54 alternate presidential elector candidates. All 108 individuals must fill out a notarized declaration of candidacy.

This is the first time since the write-in procedure has existed in California that only one presidential candidate has qualified. California has had the system in place since 1951. California was the first state to have a declaration of write-in procedure.

The law is discriminatory, because presidential elector candidates of qualified parties need not fill out any declaration of candidacy. The state party leaders submit the list to the Secretary of State, without any evidence that the individuals on the list even know they have been nominated.