On June 9, Roland Riemers, Libertarian candidate for Secretary of State of North Dakota in the June 12 primary, asked the State Supreme Court to order the Secretary of State to recount the primary vote for Secretary of State. Riemers v Jaeger. The North Dakota law says that no one can be considered nominated in a partisan primary (even if he or she got the most votes) if the candidate doesn’t poll at least 300 votes. The state says Riemers only got 247 votes.

The recount law, 16.1-16-01, says, “A recount must be conducted when: (a) any individual failed to be nominated in a primary election by one percent or less of the highest vote cast for a candidate for the office sought.” North Dakota primaries are open. The single piece of paper lists candidates of all the qualified parties, although there are columns for each party, and the instructions warn voters to only cast votes in one party’s primary. The Republican whose name was printed on the ballot for Secretary of State got 54,563 votes. Riemers argues that 1% of 54,563 is 546, and since he only missed qualifying by 53 votes, 53 is less than 546, and therefore he is entitled to a recount. The state thinks that the 1% tabulation should only apply to the vote cast inside the Libertarian primary, but Riemers says the statute does not mention the party vote. He also points to the fact that the tabulating machines disqualified about 2,000 votes for Secretary of State, with no explanation as to why.

The State Supreme Court is free to either hear this case, or reject it.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court, has had few voting rights cases. In Libertarian Party v District of Columbia Board of Elections, he voted to uphold the action of D.C. election officials who refused to count write-in votes for Bob Barr, 2008 Libertarian nominee, even though Barr was a declared write-in candidate. The decision, signed by Kavanaugh, said it was good enough that D.C. counted the total number of all write-ins cast for President, without specifying how many were received by any particular candidate. Barr was the only declared write-in presidential candidate in D.C. that year.

Judge Kavanaugh has also generally upheld campaign finance restrictions. Here is a summary of his involvement in those cases, by the Institute for Free Speech.

On July 9, a Montana state trial court removed the Green Party from the ballot, finding that it was 43 signatures short of the number needed. The state requires 5,000 valid signatures, and all sides agree that this requirement was met. But there must also be approximately 130 signatures from each of one-third of the legislative districts. The court found that nine signatures are invalid because the signer didn’t put the date; five signatures are invalid because the signer only signed, but didn’t also print; and invalidated six signatures that the state had thought were valid because, the judge wrote, the person who signed was not the person who was listed as the registered voter.

Here is the 19-page opinion in Larson v State of Montana, DDV-2018-2945. The Green Party has the option of now bringing a federal lawsuit, arguing that the March 15 petition deadline for new party petitions is unconstitutionally early. Montana has harsh winters, and there is no doubt that the party would have had enough valid signatures if the deadline had not been so early. The party collected additional signatures after the deadline had passed, and tried to submit them, but they were refused. If they had been accepted, the distribution requirement would have been met and the party would be on the ballot.

The Green Party already had a primary in Montana on June 5, and the votes were counted, so there is no problem identifying who the Green Party nominees are this year.

Similar early deadlines for new parties have been declared unconstitutional in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California (for purposes of the presidential election), Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah (in special elections).