Jim Walden is an independent candidate for Mayor of New York City. On May 2, 2025, the Second Circuit issued a one-sentence order, denying his request for “Independence” to be his ballot label, and saying it would explain later. It is almost three months since then, and the Second Circuit still hasn’t issued an explanation of why he can’t use his label. Walden v Kosinski, 25-764.
Canada is holding a special election on August 18 to fill a vacancy in the House of Commons, in the Battle River-Crowfoot district in Alberta. Canadian ballot access is easy. Candidates for House of Commons need 100 signatures and a filing fee of $1,000. The Longest Ballot Committee, a group that favors proportional representation and/or ranked choice voting, has caused 128 candidates to file for the special election, as a protest against the status quo electoral system.
Here is the list of candidates. The filing deadline is July 28 so the list may grow between now and then.
Fortunately for voters, the list of candidates is in alphabetical order. When California held its special gubernatorial election in 2003, there were 135 candidates and they were not in alphabetical order.
The protest idea may cause the Canadian ballot access law to become more difficult. See this story, which says that Conservative Party leader wants to increase the petition from 100 signatures to 1,000 signatures, and also to provide that a voter may sign for only one candidate.
On July 18, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Cohen, an Obama appointee, issued an opinion in Libertarian Party of Georgia v Raffensperger, n.d., 1:24cv-5763. This is a campaign finance case, in which the Libertarian and Green Parties sued over the law that permits individuals to give higher contributions to Democratic and Republican gubernatorial nominees than to other gubernatorial candidates. The ruling says the two minor parties lack standing because they haven’t named 2026 gubernatorial candidates, and may never do so.
In Nebraska, a party that has at least 10,000 registered members enjoys qualified status, regardless of whether it polls enough votes to stay on. The vote test is 5% for any statewide race at either of the last two elections.
The Legal Marijuana Now Party has so many registrants as of the July 1 tally, it is virtually certain to reach 10,000 in the next few months. It has 9,671. Every month it grows. In January 2022 it had 1,452; in January 2023 it had 4,215; in January 2024 it had 5,897; and in January 2025 it had 9,057.
GovFacts has this article about ballot access laws. GovFacts, also known as USAFacts, is a non-partisan website founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
