On December 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he will run for re-election in March 2018 as an independent candidate. See this story.
He will need 300,000 signatures.
2
Pennsylvania is unique for its failure to update its election code when election laws are struck down (or when state election officials determine that a law would be struck down and therefore won’t be enforced). Here is a list of eleven such laws.
1. In 1984, in Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania v David, m.d., 84-0262, the state conceded that the May petition deadline for minor party and independent candidates is unconstitutionally early. The state consented to accept petitions up until August 1 of any election year.
2. In 1993, in Patriot Party of Pennsylvania v Mitchell, 826 F.Supp. 926 (e.d.), the number of signatures required for minor party and independent petitions in odd years, for statewide office, was struck down. That was because the turnout in even years is so much higher, and the requirements for odd years were based on even-year elections, so that the petitioning burden was far higher in odd years than in even years.
3. In 1999, in Reform Party of Allegheny County v Allegheny County Dept. of Elections, 174 F.3d 305, the ban on fusion between two unqualified parties, or between a qualified party and an unqualified one, was struck down.
4. In 2001, the lawsuit Public Interest v Armstrong County Bd. of Elections, w.d., 01-1616, enjoined the law that said an unqualified party could not nominate someone who had not been a member for the past several months. The basis was that the restriction did not apply to qualified parties.
5. In 2002, Morrill v Weaver, 224 F.Supp.2d 882 (e.d.), the requirement that circulators for a candidate running for district office must live in that district was struck down.
6. In 2003, in Belitskus v Pizingrilli, 343 F.3d 632 (3rd circuit), the failure of the state to provide any alternative to filing fees, at least for poor candidates, was declared unconstitutional.
7. In 2006, the Pennsylvania Attorney General instructed the Department of State to stop requiring candidates to sign a statement that they are not “subversive persons.”
8. In 2015, in Green Party of Pennsylvania v Aichele, e.d., 2:14cv-3299, the law requiring petitions to be notarized was struck down.
9. Also in the 2015 decision, the law forbidding voters from signing only one general election petition (for any particular office) was struck down.
10. Also in the 2015 decision, the ban on out-of-state circulators was struck down.
11. In 2016, in Constitution Party of Pennsylvania v Cortes, e.d., 5:12cv-2726, the state agreed that it would not require statewide petitions to be signed by more than 5,000 voters.
On December 13, the General Counsel to the North Carolina State Board of Elections sent a letter to the North Carolina Green Party, making it easier for a party that had put its presidential nominee on the ballot in the last election in at least 35 states to prove that it had done this. Originally the State Board wanted such a party to obtain a notarized statement from election officials in each of the 35 states. But the new letter says that the publication of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, “Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 8, 2016”, is good enough. The letter says that because the federal government publishes this book, it can be relied on.
“Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election (for a particular election date)” is a publication that has been published continuously starting in 1920. In midterm years, the title is just “Statistics of the Congressional Election”. The 2016 version has a table in the back showing that the Green Party’s presidential nominee was on the ballot, with the party label, in 37 states plus D.C. Because the Clerk’s table is organized by party, not candidate, the “Green” presidential column doesn’t include the states in which Jill Stein was on as an independent.
The new North Carolina ballot access law defining “political party”, passed in October 2017 and effective January 1, 2018, says a party is ballot-qualified for all office if its presidential nominee was on the ballot in at least 35 states in the last presidential election. Such parties nominate by convention, their first year on the ballot; after that, by primary. Thanks to Michael Trudeau for this news.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has this detailed and interesting story about the December 12 U.S. District Court trial in Moore v Martin. This is the case over the March 1 petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates.
On December 13, the Third Circuit issued an 18-page opinion in Constitution Party of Pennsylvania v Cortes, 16-3266. The decision says that last year’s decision by the U.S. District Court, rewriting the Pennsylvania ballot access laws for minor party and independent candidates, was faulty. The U.S. District Court should not have imposed a county distribution requirement without finding that such a distribution requirement would have no appreciable impact on voting rights.
The Third Circuit sent the case back to the U.S. District Court to give the state and the District Court a chance to show that a county distribution requirement would do no harm to the petitioning candidates. But the Third Circuit also pointed out that county distribution requirements have been struck down by eleven different courts around the nation (including the U.S. Supreme Court, twice); and they have been upheld only by Pennsylvania state courts (relating to primary petitions circulated by Democrats and Republicans), plus one U.S. District Court in Utah in 1972.
Because this issue still isn’t settled, it seems somewhat likely that the Pennsylvania legislature will finally act to revise the state’s ballot access laws. Eleven different Pennsylvania ballot access laws relating to minor party and independent candidates have now been found unconstitutional (either by a court, or by an executive state officer) without the legislature having acted to revise them.