Ever since December 2000, many individuals have said that Ralph Nader “caused” George W. Bush to win that year’s presidential election. This letter in USA Today by Oliver Hall provides what, in my opinion, is the most convincing rebuttal to that charge.
U.S. News & World Report has this story about the California presidential elector problem for Donald Trump in California.
This lengthy human-interest story about Jill Stein in the Boston Globe reveals that she is almost certainly the best-educated person running for President this year. It says she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, that she graduated from Harvard magna cum laude, and then graduated from Harvard Medical School.
The article’s title is misleading.
On October 4, Alabama filed this brief in U.S. District Court in De La Fuente v Merrill, m.d., 2:16cv-755. The state says that Alabama’s petition requirement for independent presidential candidates is an “extremely low bar”, and says Alabama provides “easy access” to the presidential ballot.
Actually, in November 2016, only four states have fewer presidential candidates on their ballots than Alabama does. Only 18 states have higher requirements to get on the ballot for president, than the 5,000 signatures required by Alabama (using the easier method in each state): Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia.
Alabama’s brief says that if Rocky De La Fuente were allowed to be on the ballot as an independent, even though he also ran in Alabama’s Democratic presidential primary this year, this would cause “factionalism, intra-party feuding, and voter confusion.” It also says that would allow “party splintering.” Yet the state provides no evidence of these assertions. John B. Anderson ran in twenty Republican presidential primaries in 1980, but there is no evidence that allowing Anderson to run in all 51 jurisdictions in November caused voter confusion, intra-party feuding, factionalism, or party-splintering. Nor did allowing Lyndon LaRouche to run as an independent in 1984, 1988, and 1992, even though he had run in Democratic presidential primaries in those years, cause any of those problems.
Alabama says that the U.S. Supreme Court decision U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, in 1995, which struck down state ballot access laws for congressional incumbents who wanted to run for a fourth term, does not apply. The Arkansas law struck down in that case permitted congressional incumbents to run for a fourth term, but only as write-in candidates. Therefore the Arkansas law was explicitly a ballot access law. The brief does not mention decisions of the Ninth and Tenth Circuit in 2000, which said that states cannot require congressional candidates to be registered voters. A law requiring a congressional candidate to be a registered voter is a ballot access restriction, yet the California and Colorado laws were still struck down, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeals of either California or Colorado in those cases.
The average number of presidential candidates on ballots this year is six. There are 51 jurisdictions with electoral votes.
The two states that rely entirely on filing fees to regulate presidential ballot access in the general election have the most candidates: Colorado has 22 and Louisiana had 13.
Two states have ten presidential candidates: Iowa and Utah.
Two states have nine candidates: Minnesota and New Jersey.
Three states have eight candidates: Arkansas, Idaho, and New Mexico.
Five states have seven candidates: Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Seven states have six candidates: Alaska, Florida, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.
Eleven states have five candidates: California, Hawaii, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Fifteen jurisdictions have four candidates: Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, South Dakota, and Texas.
Four states have only three candidates: Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.
