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.

On September 7, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker issued a 27-page order in Rivera Madera v Detzner, n.d., 1:18cv-152. The issue is whether 32 particular Florida counties should have provided ballots in both English and Spanish, instead of just English. Because the election is so close, the judge denied the request of the plaintiffs for bilingual ballots. But he ordered that the 32 counties publish Spanish-language ballots on their websites.

His order starts with this paragraph, “Here we are again. The clock hits 6:00 a.m. Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” starts playing. Denizens of and visitors to Punxsutawaney, Pennsylvania eagerly await the groundhog’s prediction. And the state of Florida is alleged to violate federal law in its handling of elections.” A footnote to that paragraph says, “Phil Connors, portrayed by Bill Murray, experienced a similar phenomenon. Groundhog Day (Columbia Pictures Corp. 1993).”