Texas requires parties that are not on the ballot, but which hope to petition to get onto the ballot, to inform the Secretary of State, no later than January 2 of any election year. This law is perhaps unconstitutional, but no lawsuit has ever been filed against it. The law has only existed since 1993.
For 2018 so far, the only unqualified party that has filed the notice of intent is the Texas Independent Party.
On December 5, news sources are reporting that Congressman John Conyers will resign on December 5. He represents the 13th U.S. House district in Michigan. In 1985, 1987, and 1989, he introduced bills to outlaw restrictive ballot access laws in federal elections. The bills were HR 2320 in 1985; and HB 1582 in both 1987 and 1989. However, the bills never passed, and Conyers never again introduced the bill. Instead, Congressman Tim Penny and then Congressman Ron Paul introduced it in future years.
In 1998, when the ballot access bill introduced by Ron Paul, HR 3526, actually got a vote on the House floor, Conyers voted “no.” It lost 62-363.
UPDATE: this article has Conyers’ retirement letter. It is effective December 5, 2017.
In 2016, the national Democratic Party set up a “Unity Reform Commission”, which is tasked with making suggested changes to future presidential nomination rules for the party. The Unity Reform Commission is instructed to issue its ideas before January 1, 2018. The ideas will then go to the Rules & Bylaws Committee of the national party. Possible changes include (1) recommending that independents be allowed to vote in all Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses; (2) ending or limiting the number of “super-delegates” (delegates who are not elected, but serve by virtue of their position); (3) encouraging more of the caucus states to switch to presidential primaries instead. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
On December 3, 2017, John B. Anderson died. He was a member of Congress from 1960 to 1980. In 1980 he sought the Republican presidential nomination, but on April 24, 1980, realizing that Ronald Reagan was certain to become the Republican nominee, Anderson quit the race for the Republican nomination and announced as an independent candidate. He had already participated, or was about to participate, in Republican presidential primaries in 20 states (not including other states where he was a write-in in the primaries, such as Pennsylvania).
He had already missed the filing deadline for independent presidential candidates in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, and Ohio. He sued all five states and won all those lawsuits. As a result, he got on the ballot in all 50 states plus D.C.
He didn’t choose his vice-presidential running mate until August 27, 1980. He chose Patrick Lucey, former Democratic Governor of Wisconsin. Anderson’s attorneys persuaded almost all states to let his stand-in, Milton Eisenhower, resign, and be replaced by Lucey. He sued three states that wouldn’t permit this, and won all three cases, against Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Only two states didn’t list Lucey; they were states he didn’t get around to suing.
Later his Ohio petition deadline case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed with the U.S. District Court that had struck down the March 20 deadline.
No state kept Anderson off the ballot because of “sore loser” laws. He thus set precedents in many states that sore loser laws don’t apply to president. Unfortunately, starting in 2012, some states started re-interpreting their laws to say that sore loser laws do apply to presidential primaries, even when the laws had not been recodified. Also in recent years, some states that let him substitute Lucey for Eisenhower have started denying the ability for independent presidential candidates to substitute a new nominee. Thus Anderson’s landmark legal victories have been slipping away. Anderson died at the age of 95. Here is a newspaper obituary.
The Arizona Libertarian Party has filed this 66-page opening brief in Libertarian Party of Arizona v Reagan, 17-16491. The case concerns the requirements for getting on the primary ballot of a small qualified party. The state sets different rules for parties that have been continuously qualified, versus parties that got on the ballot at either of the last two elections. As a result, the ballot-qualified Libertarian Party, which is subject to the harsh rules, was unable to run any candidates for Congress or state legislature in 2016, whereas the ballot-qualified Green Party, which is subject to extremely easy rules, was able to run such candidates. Yet the Libertarian Party in Arizona is larger than the Green Party in Arizona.
