On August 6, the deadline, independent gubernatorial candidate Greg Orman submitted over 10,000 signatures to run for Governor of Kansas. The legal requirement is 5,000 signatures. See this story, which says that Orman relied partly on paid circulators. Thanks to Gene Berkman and Shawn Griffiths for the news.
This article says that the South Carolina Election Commission’s spokesperson Chris Whitmire believes there is no likelihood that the Election Commission will remove James Smith, the Democratic nominee for Governor, from the November ballot.
First, the Libertarian Party state convention didn’t reject him; only the party state committee rejected him. Second, the Libertarian Party doesn’t have its own nominee for Governor.
So, although South Carolina law continues to say that someone who seeks the nomination of two parties, yet fails to capture both nominations, can’t be any party’s nominee, a little bit of wiggle room has now been introduced into the system. Thanks to Dave Gillespie for the link.
Georgia is one of the few states that votes entirely using machines that have no paper trail. This McClatchy newspaper story illustrates some obvious and serious problems with the Georgia system exposed in this year’s primaries.
According to this article, the South Carolina Libertarian Party will file a challenge to the general election ballot position of James Smith, who won the Democratic primary in June for Governor. South Carolina law says that if a candidate seeks the nomination of two or more parties, and any party rejects him or her, then the candidate cannot be the nominee of any party. See this story.
Probably the South Carolina Libertarian Party wants to lose this challenge. Losing the challenge would establish a favorable precedent, and demonstrate that the law is unclear, impractical, and senseless. No other of the ten fusion states has a similar law. The ten states that permit fusion in some circumstances are Connecticut, Idaho, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Vermont. States that have had fusion in the past 25 years, but no longer have it, are Arkansas, California, Delaware, South Dakota, and Utah. None of those states had a South Carolina-type restriction either.
On August 6, Chris Anglin, a registered Republican and a candidate for North Carolina Supreme Court Justice, filed a lawsuit in state court to regain his party label. A recent law says that candidates such as Anglin cannot have their party label on the ballot if they switched parties during the last three months before filing.
Like party labels in the top-two system in California, a North Carolina judicial candidate’s party label does not mean he or she is the party nominee. There are no party nominees in North Carolina judicial races. The party label is merely a statement of how the candidate is registered.
See this story, which mentions the Anglin lawsuit as well as some other lawsuits being filed today against recent election laws changes.
