In the November 2018 election, there will be Democrats on the ballot in all but three U.S. House districts. The Republican Party has never had that many candidates. The Democrats have not had candidates in so many districts since 1974, when they only missed one district, Ohio’s 3rd. The other years in which the Democratic Party had that many candidates were 1964 (they missed one), 1962 (they missed one), and 1958 (they missed two).

The only three districts in 2018 that the Democrats missed are California’s 8th district, Georgia’s 8th district, and North Carolina’s 3rd district. In California’s 8th district, the top-two system blocked any Democrat from qualifying for the general election ballot. There were two Republicans and three Democrats. The two Republicans received 44,482 and 24,933 votes. The three Democrats received 23,675, 10,990, and 5,049 votes.

In 2018, Republicans have candidates for U.S. House on the ballot in 398 districts. For purposes of this blog post, the 435 regular seats, plus the District of Columbia’s Delegate seat, are counted, for a total of 436 districts. If purists object to including the D.C. Delegate post, then the Republicans have candidates in 397 districts.

Last month, the Bread and Roses Party filed a petition to be a qualified party in Maryland. It submitted approximately 15,000 signatures, but was told that it only has 9,773 valid signatures. The requirement is 10,000 signatures.

On September 5, the party’s founders filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that it is unconstitutional to invalidate signatures just because the signer failed to include his or her middle initial. Without the law requiring the signature on the petition to exactly match the name on the voter registration form, the party would have had enough valid signatures. Segal v Maryland State Board of Elections, 1:18cv-2731.

The lawsuit also challenges the “sore loser” law, because the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate, Jerome Segal, had run in this year’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. The case is assigned to Judge George Hazel, an Obama appointee. The case is pro se. Here is the Complaint.

The State Board of Elections will permit the Bread and Roses Party to continue gathering signatures, and if it gets another 227 valid signatures, the entire petition will be approved and can be used to put the party on the ballot for the 2020 election.

This year, the only candidates who will be listed on the New York ballot for U.S. Senate are incumbent Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, and Republican nominee Chele Chiavacci. This is the first time since 1956 that a New York U.S. Senate election has had only two names on the ballot.

The Green Party is ballot-qualified, and would have run someone, but because the primary for congress was in June, the party’s normal processes for recruiting candidates was too late. The Libertarian Party is not ballot-qualified, but it did petition this year for a statewide slate. But it left U.S. Senate off its statewide petition because the petitioning period for U.S. Senate was a different time period than the petitioning period for state office, so in effect the party would have needed two separate statewide petitions.

The other ballot-qualified parties in New York all nominated either Gillibrand or Chiavacci. Gillibrand is the nominee of the Working Families, Independence, and Women’s Equality Party. Chiavacci is the nominee of the Conservative and Reform Parties.