The Daily News of New York city has this editorial about the June 26 congressional primary for the Reform Party in two districts. The editorial has objective information about the small number of voters who participated. It says the state law should be changed to make it more difficult for voters to obtain a primary in which write-ins are tallied. It ignores the much better idea, which the Reform Party has been trying to publicize, that the law should be changed to let small qualified parties nominate by convention instead of primary.

That idea was endorsed in 1951 by the National Civic League, in its publication, “A Model Direct Primary Law”, authored by Professor Joseph P. Harris. At the time he was considered the nation’s leading expert on election administration. The idea has been adopted in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia (for statewide office only), Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. In addition, many other states let new qualified parties nominate by convention. And Alabama, South Carolina, and Virginia let all parties, large and small alike, decide for themselves whether to nominate by primary or convention.

On July 6, the Virginia State Board of Elections determined that Matt Waters has enough valid signatures to be on the November 2018 ballot for U.S. Senate. He is the Libertarian nominee. He needed 10,000 valid signatures. The only other candidates on the ballot for U.S. Senate are the Democratic incumbent, Tim Kaine; and the Republican nominee, Corey Stewart.

The Libertarian Party has never been a qualified party in Virginia. The last qualified third party in Virginia was the Reform Party, but it lost its status in November 1997. The only states in which the Democratic and Republican Parties have been the only ballot-qualified parties continuously during the last twenty years are New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (however, the only qualified third parties in Georgia were only qualified for statewide office, not district or county office). The problem in Virginia is that a party is defined as a group that got 10% in any statewide race in either of the last two statewide elections. Bills have been introduced repeatedly to lower the 10%, but they always fail to pass.

Willie Lee Wilson was a candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. In 2017 he sued the Democratic National Committee over his belief that the national party had injured his campaign. On June 22, U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden allowed part of Wilson’s case to proceed, although the judge dismissed other parts.

The allegations for which evidence can now be presented are: (1) Even though Wilson was invited to a multi-candidate campaign rally in South Carolina, Democratic National Committee officials allowed Secret Service agents on Hillary Clinton’s detail to use the threat of force to keep Wilson off the stage; (2) the party refused to allow Wilson to enter into a contract to obtain the party’s voter registration files. Here is the 14-page ruling in Wilson v DNC Services Corporation, D.C., 1:17cv-730.