Ohio Governor John Kasich was asked on CNN which presidential candidate he will vote for. He said he will not vote for Hillary Clinton. He said it is “very unlikely” he will vote for Donald Trump. When asked about Gary Johnson, he said, “I haven’t even gone there yet. It’s a long way to election day.” See this story.
On September 15, the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission determined that Shawn O’Connor, an independent candidate for U.S. House, 1st district, should remain on the ballot. Democratic Party officials had challenged his position on the ballot, on the grounds that some of his signers had also signed a petition for another petitioning candidate for the same office. But the Commission ruled 4-1 that the law forbidding signing for two candidates can’t be enforced, because the petition form does not warn signers that they can’t sign two petitions for the same office. See this story.
The U.S. House race, 1st district, has five candidates on the ballot: a Democrat, a Libertarian, a Republican, and two independents.
On September 15, the New York State Board of Elections removed two independent presidential candidates from the ballot. They removed Rocky De La Fuente because they believe his petition was filed one day too late. They removed Lynn Kahn because her petition was far from having 15,000 raw signatures. Neither candidate had been challenged. But in New York, the State Board of Elections removes candidates if it is obvious that they don’t meet the requirements, even if no challenge is filed.
The Board also determined that the Women’s Equality Party presidential nominee is Hillary Clinton, not Lynn Kahn. Two factions of the party had submitted different presidential nominees.
New York will only have four presidential candidates for President on its ballot. This is the fewest number of presidential candidates in the general election in New York since 1964, when there were also just four.
Evan McMullin, independent presidential candidate, is quoted in this news story as saying corruption is to blame for last week’s decision by the Secretary of State to keep him off the ballot. McMullin has been treated unfairly in several states, but only now he is speaking out about unfair ballot access laws.
Unfortunately, the press in Florida doesn’t seem to report that the same Florida Secretary of State, Kenneth Detzner, ruled on September 1, 2011, that the requirement that qualified parties must be recognized by the FEC as “national committees” cannot be enforced. Detzner changed his mind last week, on the very eve of ballot-printing deadlines, leaving the affected parties almost no time to find an attorney and file a lawsuit.
On September 12, the Libertarian Party national chair, Nicholas Sarwark, asked the General Services Administration to provide national security briefings to Gary Johnson and Bill Weld. See the party’s letter here.
