In November 2018, 28 candidates for Governor of Tennessee will be on the ballot. For regularly-scheduled statewide general elections, this is the greatest number of candidates on a government-printed ballot in U.S. history, for a particular office.

The main reason there are so many candidates in the Tennessee Governor’s race is that the Libertarian Party placed fifteen candidates on the ballot, using the independent procedure, which only needs 25 signatures, and no filing fee. Also one Green filed, plus ten bona fide independents.

Libertarians took this action to draw attention to the irrational ballot access laws of Tennessee. The petition to create a party requires signatures equal to 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote, a petition so difficult that it hasn’t been successfully used since 1968. Libertarians this year actually tried to get 23 gubernatorial candidates on the ballot, using the independent procedure, but not all of them qualified.

The previous high number of candidates in a regularly-scheduled statewide general election was for president in Colorado in November 2016. That ballot had 22 presidential candidates. Colorado does not require a petition to get on the ballot for president in November; it just requires a $1,000 fee.

Here is a link to the Tennessee Secretary of State’s web page, listing the November 2018 candidates. The press in Tennessee has almost entirely ignored the number of candidates on the ballot.

No petition to place a new party on the ballot has succeeded in Tennessee since 1968. The law requires a petition of 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote, which is currently 33,844 signatures, and in the recent past has been over 40,000 signatures. Parties that have tried and failed to petition include the Libertarian, Green, Constitution, Americans Elect, and Reform Parties.

Tennessee is in the Sixth Circuit. As previously reported, on September 6, the Sixth Circuit ruled that Chris Graveline should be on the ballot as an independent for Michigan Attorney General, even though he failed to collect the required 30,000 signatures. The basis was that the Michigan requirement had been in effect for thirty years and had only been used successfully twice. It stands to reason that if requiring 30,000 signatures in Michigan (which is less than 1% of the last gubernatorial vote) is unconstitutional because the petition is used so seldom, it should be unconstitutional for Tennessee to require 2.5% of the last gubernational vote for new parties, given that the Tennessee hurdle has not been used once in the last 48 years.

On September 7, the Michigan Secretary of State added Chris Graveline to her list of candidates who will appear on the general election ballot. He is an independent candidate for Attorney General who failed to collect the legally required 30,000 valid signatures, but who won injunctive relief against that requirement. Here is the candidate list. Attorney General is near the top, following Governor-Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State.