This year, the only candidates who will be listed on the New York ballot for U.S. Senate are incumbent Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, and Republican nominee Chele Chiavacci. This is the first time since 1956 that a New York U.S. Senate election has had only two names on the ballot.

The Green Party is ballot-qualified, and would have run someone, but because the primary for congress was in June, the party’s normal processes for recruiting candidates was too late. The Libertarian Party is not ballot-qualified, but it did petition this year for a statewide slate. But it left U.S. Senate off its statewide petition because the petitioning period for U.S. Senate was a different time period than the petitioning period for state office, so in effect the party would have needed two separate statewide petitions.

The other ballot-qualified parties in New York all nominated either Gillibrand or Chiavacci. Gillibrand is the nominee of the Working Families, Independence, and Women’s Equality Party. Chiavacci is the nominee of the Conservative and Reform Parties.

The Independent Party became ballot-qualified in Louisiana in December 2016, but until now, it has not had any candidates for any federal or state office. But in this year’s congressional elections, the party has four U.S. House candidates. They are Frederick Jones in the First district, Belden Batiste in the Second district, Billy Burkette in the Fifth district, and Devin Lance Graham in the Sixth district.

Actual independent candidates in Louisiana have “no party” as a ballot label. But members of the Independent Party have “Independent” as their ballot label. It was not possible for an Independent Party to be qualified in Louisiana until 2014, when the legislature repealed the law that said no party could be called “Independent Party.”

The Independent Party became ballot-qualified by filing an application, paying a fee of $1,000, and showing that at least 1,000 voters were registered into the party.

On September 12, the Institute for Free Speech filed this amicus curiae brief in Libertarian National Committee v Federal Election Commission, in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit. This is the lawsuit over federal bans on large contributions from deceased individuals to political parties.

The amicus says, “This Court should fashion a broad, bright-line rule that cleanly clarifies the circumstances where contribution limits will not apply to bequests. Such a remedy is easily articulated. The Court should find that contribution limits are inappropriate where a bequest is made without any prior coordination with the recipient committee, and where that committee seeks to receive it only after the contributors’ death.” The amicus says that if such a clear ruling is not released, that will just cause more lawsuits on this subject in the future.