Political science professor Joshua Tucker has this column in the Washington Post, mulling over the possibility that faithless presidential electors from states such as Ohio or Texas might put someone like John Kasich or Ted Cruz into the running for the presidency, in the electoral college. Thanks to Daniel Smith for the link.
Georgia this year required independent presidential candidates to file their 7,500 signatures by July 12. But the state also required such candidates to file the names of the presidential elector candidates by July 1. Rocky De La Fuente petitioned in Georgia and submitted 14,000 signatures by the July 12 deadline. But because he hadn’t turned in a list of his presidential elector candidates by July 1, the state rejected his petition, although it still went to the trouble to determine how many signatures were valid. The state said only about 20% of his signatures were invalid.
When De La Fuente challenged the petition verification in state court, the court ruled that it didn’t matter how many signatures were valid, because he couldn’t get on the ballot anyway because he hadn’t filed his electors by July 1. De La Fuente is also challenging the July 1 deadline for presidential electors, although that case is in federal court. On October 17, he filed this brief in the Eleventh Circuit in his case challenging the July 1 elector deadline. De La Fuente relies heavily on the state’s failure to come up with any actual state interest for requiring the elector candidates by July 1. The case is De La Fuente v Kemp, 16-15880.
Georgia is holding 236 legislative elections next month: 56 state senate races and 180 state house races. Only 46 of those 236 races have more than one candidate on the ballot. Yet whenever Georgia ballot access laws are challenged, the state claims its 5% petition requirement for district office is needed to prevent ballots from being too crowded.
There is only one independent on the ballot in any Georgia legislative race this year, and no minor party candidates for the legislature. Georgia hasn’t had any minor party candidates for the legislature on the ballot since 2004. Yet, generally, the big newspapers and broadcast stations in Georgia never discuss this situation.
Bruce Entry, one of the four independent candidates for U.S. Senate in Florida, brought four armed security guards with him on the evening of October 17, as he tried to gain entry to the debate stage. See this story. He was not permitted to join the debate. Debate sponsors said no one would be invited who was not at 15% in the polls. However, no poll has been taken for the Florida race that asked respondents about all of the ballot-listed candidates.
This McClatchy newspaper chain story about Laurence Kotlikoff says that he has filed as a write-in presidential candidate in every state that has such a procedure, except for North Carolina. Kotlikoff does appear to have the best resume for presidential candidates this year who are mostly depending on write-in votes. He has been diligently filing as a write-in in virtually every state, and had been planning on doing this since 2015. As the story says, he also got himself on the ballot in two states, Colorado and Louisiana.
However, he did miss filing as a write-in in Delaware, as well as North Carolina. The story says he plans to bring lawsuits against the states that don’t allow write-in votes for President.
