Lawrence Couny, Indiana election officials mistakenly printed ballots that label the three Libertarian candidates for County Council as independent candidates. See this story. The county is reprinting ballots and sending out corrected ballots.
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This Illinois news story points out that Illinois has no minor party presidential candidates this year, although independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is on the ballot.
The story does not say that this is the first presidential election since 1964 in which Illinois has had no minor party candidates on the ballot, but that is an accurate statement which the author could have said.
In 1964 only the Democratic and Republican nominees were on in Illinois. The Socialist Labor Party pad petitioned,, and no one challenged its petition validity. But it was still kept off because at the time, Illinois had a law requiring a new party to run a full slate of candidates. That year the entire Illinois House was being elected at-large. The Socialist Labor Party petition did not list any candidates for State House. The challengers successfully argued that the petition was invalid because it didn’t include 177 candidates for State House.
The reason the entire house was being elected at-large is that the legislature had failed to pass a redistricting bill that didn’t violate one person, one vote.
On October 22, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson held a hearing in Stein v LaRose. At the conclusion, he stated from the bench that he believes the issue belongs in state court, and said Stein should have gone to the State Supreme Court. The issue is whether votes for Stein should be counted. She is on the ballot but the Secretary of State says her votes won’t be counted because someone not officially part of the Stein campaign filed a withdrawal of the vice-presidential nominee.
On October 21, J.D. Vance mentioned Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and also mentioned Jill Stein, while speaking in Wisconsin. See this story. He did not offer any criticism of Democratic efforts to remove Stein from the ballot. He did criticize Democrats for fighting to keep Kennedy on the ballot, something Democrats did in only three states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina).
He also said that Kennedy would get more votes than Stein, and said Democrats are forcing Kennedy to be a “spoiler”.
Here is the story from the Associated Press. Thanks to Darryl W. Perry for clueing us in!