On August 17, the South Dakota Secretary of State conducted the usual procedure to determine randomly the order of party nominees on the November ballot. The Libertarian Party will be listed first, followed by the Republican Party. This article describes that, and also has details about why the Constitution Party won’t be on the ballot.
A U.S. District Court Judge will hear arguments in Graveline v Johnson, e.d., 2:18cv-12354, on Wednesday, August 22. This is the case in which independent Attorney General candidate Chris Graveline challenges the Michigan independent candidate petition requirement, which requires 30,000 signatures, due several weeks before the primary.
Some states prefer to print their November ballots in August, even though other states have their primaries in September and thus obviously don’t print theirs until mid-September or even late September. North Carolina is one of the states that prefers to print its November ballots in August.
However, a state court fight over whether to remove two statewide ballot measures has delayed ballot printing until September 1, at the earliest. See this story. As a result, there will also be more time to settle two other election lawsuits. One is the state court case over whether two judicial candidates should have their party labels on the ballot. The other is the federal court case over whether the three Constitution Party nominees who had run earlier in the year in major party primaries, and who had lost their primaries, can be on the November ballot as Constitution Party nominees.
In the case over party labels, the lower court had put the labels on the ballot, but state legislative leaders have filed a notice of appeal, but they haven’t taken any other action to advance their appeal yet.
In the Constitution Party case, the plaintiffs recently filed this brief.
On August 16, a hearing was held in a South Dakota circuit court in Lederman v Krebs, civ 18-147. Lederman is the Republican Party state chair. He had sued the Secretary of State to prevent her from certifying the names of any Constitution Party candidates on the November ballot. Two factions of the Constitution Party, with different state chairs, had each held a nominating convention and chosen different nominees for public office. The basis for the lawsuit was that a party could only have one set of nominees. The judge ordered the Secretary of State not to have any nominees.
Neither faction of the party had any attorneys in court, so it was not possible for anyone associated with the Constitution Party to call witnesses and introduce any evidence about who the rightful state officers are.
On August 15, James R. Adams filed his brief in the Third Circuit in Adams v Carney, 18-1045. This is the lawsuit over the Delaware requirement that all state court judges must be members of a major party. In Delaware, a “major party” is defined as a party that has registration of at least 5% of the state total. Adams is an independent. He won his lawsuit in U.S. District Court, and the state is appealing. Delaware does not have elections for judicial office. Judges are appointed.
