On Octdober 6, independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin chose Mindy Finn to be his vice-presidential running mate. Here is the wikipedia page about her. She lives in the District of Columbia. She is a Republican who earlier this year supported Marco Rubio for president.
On September 29, Steven Machat, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Florida, sued the Cox Media Group in federal court over his exclusion from their debates. However, on October 5, his case was dismissed on procedural grounds. He represented himself and it appears he didn’t allege there is a federal question of law in his case. Machat v Cox Media Group, s.d. Florida, 1:16cv-24155.
The U.S. Senate debates in Florida are October 17 and October 26. Only the Republican and Democratic nominees have been invited.
On October 6, a Texas state trial court in Austin ruled that independent candidate Laura Thompson does have enough valid signatures to be a candidate for re-election to her seat in the State House of Representatives, district 120. The chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party, Manuel Medina, had sued the Secretary of State to remove her from the ballot. Medina argued that Thompson did not have 500 valid signatures, but the court disagreed.
In Texas, Democrats and Republicans need no signatures to get themselves on a primary ballot. The entire purpose of ballot access laws is to measure whether a candidate has a modicum of support. It is obvious that Thompson has voter support, because she won the special election a few months ago to fill her seat. Nothing could so illustrate the absurdity of U.S. ballot access jurisprudence than this case, in which the Democratic Party nominee hoped to be the only name on the November ballot, by removing her only opponent. UPDATE: see this story.
On September 15, the Florida Supreme Court invalidated a Florida ballot access law that sometimes keeps candidates off the ballot through no fault of theirs. Wright v City of Miami Gardens, SC16-1518. Florida depends on filing fees, rather than mandatory ballot access petitions, for all candidates except independent candidates for President. Consequently, Florida laws concerning filing fees are of the utmost importance.
Section 99.061(7)(a) says, “If a candidate’s check is returned by the bank for any reason, the filing officer shall immediately notify the candidate and the candidate shall have until the end of qualifying to pay the fee with a cashier’s check…Failure to pay the fee as provided in this subparagraph shall disqualify the candidate.”
In the 2016 election for Mayor of Miami Gardens, candidate James Barry Wright paid his filing fee. But eight days later the bank returned the check uncashed, because the bank made a mistake. The qualifying period had already ended when the bank did that, so the lower court felt the law is unambiguous and kept Wright off the ballot. The Florida Supreme Court says the law, when applied to situations when the candidate did nothing wrong, is unconstitutional. The court ordered a new election, which will be held November 8, 2016.
The court said, “Unreasonable and unnecessary restrictions on the elective process are a threat to our republican form of government. At their worst, they cloak tyranny in the garb of Democracy. See Thomas Paine, Dissertation on the First Principles of Government (1795).” The decision then quotes Paine: “THe right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.”
The vote on whether to hold the law unconstitutional was 5-2. One dissenting justice would have construed the law to mean that Wright should have been put on the ballot. The other dissenting justice said it is improper for the Supreme Court to hold the law unconstitutional, when the plaintiff himself had not made the argument that the law is unconstitutional. The majority said the law is so clear, it cannot be construed to have allowed Wright on the ballot. Thanks to Michael Drucker for this news.
On October 6, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan set a hearing date in Level the Playing Field v Federal Election Commission, D.C. 1:15cv-1397. This is case filed on June 22, 2015 by Level the Playing Field, Peter Ackerman, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein. The lawsuit argues that the FEC is obliged to rule that the Commission on Presidential Debates is illegally ignoring the federal campaign finance laws. The CPD depends on large contributions from for-profit corporations, to pay for its debates. Yet federal campaign laws do not allow corporations to donate to federal candidates. The lawsuit argues that the CPD is in effect assisting both the Democratic and Republican nominees against all of their competitors.
The hearing will be January 5, 2017, at 10 a.m., courtroom 2, in the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. This will be the first hearing in this case.
This case should not be confused with Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates, which already lost in U.S. District Court and is now in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. circuit. Johnson v CPD argues that the CPD is in violation of federal anti-trust laws.
