According to this story, the New Hampshire Democratic Party has again asked the Ballot Law Commission to remove independent U.S. House candidate Shawn O’Connor from the ballot. The Ballot Law Commission already voted 4-1 to leave him on the ballot. The Commission will meet again on Wednesday, September 21.
On the evening of Monday, September 19, Mike Fellows was killed in a car crash. He had been returning from a candidate’s forum. He is the Montana Libertarian Party’s nominee for U.S. House. He was also the most active leader of that party. Whenever there was a legislative hearing on a bill affecting ballot access, he was there. He was also the chief candidate-recruiter for the party, and a very good source for election law news from Montana for me.
The Montana election law does allow the Libertarian Party to replace him on the ballot, but it must do that within five days. The overseas absentee ballots have not been mailed yet and can be reprinted. Thanks to Michael Fucci for this sad news. UPDATE: see this story. Also, this story.
Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, sent some overseas absentee ballots that have multiple errors: (1) Gary Johnson’s name is omitted; (2) Darrell Castle’s party name is listed as “Conservative” instead of “Constitution”; (3) the Green Party vice-presidential stand-in is listed, instead of the actual vice-presidential nominee. See this story at Election Law Blog. The county has apologized and says it has sent out corrected ballots to all the voters who received the faulty ballots.
UPDATE: Indiana County made the same error.
In early 2011, the Florida legislature passed HB 1355, which said that ballot-qualified parties could not place their presidential nominee on the ballot unless the FEC recognized that party as a “national committee”, or unless the party submitted a petition signed by 1% of the number of registered voters. The bill was so unclear, it did not even specify whether this petition should name the presidential nominee or not.
The Federal Election web page lists only the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and Reform Parties as national committees. Scroll down to “III. Political Party Committees.” Under the chart there is a footnote, marked with a double asterisk, naming the parties other than Democratic and Republican.
The FEC granted national committee status to the Socialist Party in December 1980, and to the Natural Law Party in late September 1992, and has never formally revoked their status. But the web page doesn’t list them because they haven’t filed financial reports recently. FEC officials say it is ambiguous whether those two parties are still “national committees.” Obviously, if the FEC doesn’t know which parties are national committees, it is absurd for Florida to use that criterion for ballot access.
A further absurdity is that the Reform Party in each of the last two presidential elections polled under 1,000 votes in the entire nation for its presidential nominee, yet under Florida’s law, it is safely on the ballot this year. Several parties polled substantially more votes for President in 2012 than the Reform Party did. The Peace & Freedom Party polled 67,037 for Roseanne Barr; the Justice Party polled 40,257 for Rocky Anderson; and America’s Independent Party polled 39,997 for Thomas Hoefling. All three of those parties were on the 2012 ballot for President in Florida because in 2011 the Secretary of State decided not to enforce the FEC-recognition law. But under the new strict behavior of the Florida Secretary of State, they do not qualify.
Recently Republican Party national committee Reince Priebus said that Republicans who intend to seek the party’s nomination in 2020, and who haven’t endorsed Donald Trump, may be penalized by the Republican National Committee. Political scientist Boris Heersink has this analysis in the Washington Post, explaining that the Republican national committee has no power to do that.
Even the Democratic National Committee twenty years ago did not have the ability to prevent Lyndon LaRouche from running in its presidential primaries (which he did in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996). In 1995 the Democratic National Committee declared that LaRouche is not a bona fide Democrat, but that didn’t keep him off any presidential primary ballots. The DNC did pass a rule saying any LaRouche delegates who won presidential primaries would not be seated.
