Georgia is one of the few states that votes entirely using machines that have no paper trail. This McClatchy newspaper story illustrates some obvious and serious problems with the Georgia system exposed in this year’s primaries.
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According to this article, the South Carolina Libertarian Party will file a challenge to the general election ballot position of James Smith, who won the Democratic primary in June for Governor. South Carolina law says that if a candidate seeks the nomination of two or more parties, and any party rejects him or her, then the candidate cannot be the nominee of any party. See this story.
Probably the South Carolina Libertarian Party wants to lose this challenge. Losing the challenge would establish a favorable precedent, and demonstrate that the law is unclear, impractical, and senseless. No other of the ten fusion states has a similar law. The ten states that permit fusion in some circumstances are Connecticut, Idaho, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Vermont. States that have had fusion in the past 25 years, but no longer have it, are Arkansas, California, Delaware, South Dakota, and Utah. None of those states had a South Carolina-type restriction either.
On August 6, Chris Anglin, a registered Republican and a candidate for North Carolina Supreme Court Justice, filed a lawsuit in state court to regain his party label. A recent law says that candidates such as Anglin cannot have their party label on the ballot if they switched parties during the last three months before filing.
Like party labels in the top-two system in California, a North Carolina judicial candidate’s party label does not mean he or she is the party nominee. There are no party nominees in North Carolina judicial races. The party label is merely a statement of how the candidate is registered.
See this story, which mentions the Anglin lawsuit as well as some other lawsuits being filed today against recent election laws changes.
On August 4, the New Mexico Libertarian Party chose Gary Johnson as its nominee for U.S. Senate, to replace Aubrey Dunn, who withdrew recently. Johnson must decide by August 18 whether to accept the nomination. See this story.
On Saturday, August 4, both houses of the North Carolina legislature overrode the gubernatorial veto of SB 3. That is the bill that says judicial candidates, who normally have their party of registration listed on the ballot, cannot have a label if they switched parties during the three months before the filing deadline.
There are no party nominees for judicial races. There are no primaries for judicial office in 2018. The party labels merely inform the voters of how that judicial candidate is registered.
There will probably be litigation over the state’s policy of giving party labels to some candidates, but not others. More than a single judicial candidate is affected by the new law, which only came into existence after candidate filing had closed.