A 15-year-old Iowa resident filed with the FEC some time ago, saying he is running for President and that his name is Deez Nuts. He wrote Public Policy Polling to include him in some presidential polls, so PPP complied, and Nuts did well. Many readers have e-mailed me links to stories about this. Here is the most comprehensive one.
Dr. David Gill, the Democratic nominee for U.S. House in Illinois’ 13th district in 2012, will run as an independent for the same seat in 2016. He is an emergency room physician. See this story. In 2012 he came within 1,002 votes of beating the Republican nominee, Rodney Davis. Davis is still in the incumbent and will run for re-election.
The 13th district includes Champaign, Decatur, most of Springfield, and extends west to the Mississippi River. Gill will need approximately 15,000 valid signatures. Illinois requires more signatures for independent candidates for U.S. House than any other states except North Carolina and Georgia.
On August 15, the South Dakota Constitution and Libertarian Parties filed this brief in the pending ballot access lawsuit in U.S. District Court. The purpose of this brief is to rebut the state’s last brief, which said the two parties don’t have standing.
William Galvin has been Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts since 1994. During his earlier years in office, he permitted independent presidential candidates to list stand-ins for vice-president on their general election petitions, in instances when those presidential candidates hadn’t yet chosen their vice-presidential running mates. He also allowed presidential and vice-presidential substitution for unqualified parties who wanted to petition before they had chosen their national tickets.
In 2004 he let Ralph Nader use a vice-presidential stand-in. In 2000 he let the Reform Party uses stand-ins. In 1996 he let the Constitution Party use stand-ins. A previous Secretary had permitted John B. Anderson to use a vice-presidential stand-in in 1980.
But in 2008, he refused to let the Libertarian Party use stand-ins. The party sued and won in U.S. District Court, but after the election was over, the First Circuit reversed, in a decision that didn’t even mention all of the older precedents that say stand-ins must be permitted. The earlier, favorable precedents were based on equal protection. Because every state permits qualified parties to substitute, other courts had reasoned that states must permit everyone to substitute. For example, in 1972 all the states let the Democratic Party replace vice-presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton with Sargent Shriver.
Unfortunately, on August 13, Galvin reiterated that he will not allow substitution. The Libertarian Party had asked for a better policy, because the party won’t know who its national ticket is until the end of May, and it would like to petition before then. It is conceivable that the state legislature might amend the existing law to allow presidential substitution, or at least vice-presidential substitution, but of course someone in Massachusetts would need to expend some energy looking for a legislative sponsor.
Law Professor Brian Kalt of Michigan State University has this interesting essay, saying Article One does not permit U.S. citizens living permanently overseas to vote for federal office. Article One of the U.S. Constitution says, “section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several states.” Similar provisions in other parts of the Constitution relate to U.S. Senate and presidential elections.
Ever since 1986, a federal law has required the states to let citizens who live permanently overseas to register to vote, in the state in which they last lived before leaving the U.S.
