On February 5, the Kentucky legislature passed HB 157. The vote was unanimous in both chambers. It lets individuals give $5,000 to a minor party. The old law said individuals could give that much to a major party, but not to any other party. That policy was struck down last year in U.S. District Court in Shickel v Dilger. The state did not appeal.
On February 8, the Ninth Circuit heard Soltysik v Padilla, 16-55758. This is the case over the California law that says members of qualified parties may have the name of the party they are registered in on the ballot. But members of unqualified parties must have “party preference: none.” The plaintiff, Mimi Soltysik, is a registered Socialist and when he ran for the legislature in 2014, he wanted to have “party preference: Socialist” on the ballot, but that was not allowed because the Socialist Party is not ballot-qualified.
The hearing lasted 43 minutes. The state argued that if a party is not ballot-qualified, it is not a party. The judges seemed to all feel that this is false. Clearly virtually everyone has heard of the Socialist Party, which is recognized by the Federal Election Commission as one of the eight national committees in the U.S. Here is a link to the audio.
The judges wondered why the state couldn’t change the ballot label to “party preference: no qualified party.” Or they wondered why the state couldn’t put an asterisk next to the name of candidates who are members of unqualified parties, so that Soltysik could have put “party preference: Socialist*”, with the asterisk leading to a note on the ballot saying “* not a qualified party.”
The ACLU attorneys, who argued for Soltysik, pointed out that the California voter registration form asks all voters if they wish to indicate a party preference, and applicants are free to choose a qualified party or an unqualified party as their party preference. Therefore, the “party preference” applies to both types of parties on the voter registration form, yet not on the ballot, so that is contradictory.
Joel Searby, for the Centrist Project, has this article about the 2018 independent candidates who have announced so far. Searby was campaign manager for Evan McMullin, independent presidential candidate in November 2016 who got 731,733 votes. Thanks to IVN for the link.
On February 9, the 4th circuit stayed the U.S. District Court order in North Carolina Democratic Party v Berger, 18-1150. The vote was 2-1. Judges Stephanie Thacker (an Obama appointee) and Paul Niemeyer (a Bush Sr. appointee) were in the majority. Judge Diana Motz (a Clinton appointee) dissented.
Therefore, there will be no 2018 primaries for the four statewide judicial elections in North Carolina. Even though party labels are on the ballot, all candidates will qualify as individuals and will only appear on the November ballot. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news. The Fourth Circuit did not issue any explanation for its decision.
Ballotpedia is already collecting and making available lists of 2018 candidates for all statewide office, in all states, even though filing deadlines are still in the future in almost all states. Ballotpedia searches for information about candidate announcements to help compile the list. Once the filing deadline passes in a particular state, the page will be amended to just show the candidates who actually got on the primary or general election ballot. See here. In order to obtain the list for any particular state, one must input a particular residence address for that state, because apparently the editors thought this tool is only interesting to people to learn about their own state.
