The Wyoming Secretary of State’s office says that the independent presidential petitions for Jill Stein and Rocky De La Fuente each have enough valid signatures. The office is still checking the Evan McMullin petition and expects to be finished by the end of the day, Thursday, September 8.
On September 7, the Kentucky Libertarian and Constitution Parties filed this request for reconsideration in the Sixth Circuit, in the case over Kentucky’s definition of “political party.”
During this week, Florida election officials have behaved unethically and violated due process, by eliminating three minor party presidential candidates from the November ballot.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation, and America’s Party, were already ballot-qualified parties in Florida, yet their presidential filings have been rejected because they are not recognized by the Federal Election Commission as national committees. But on September 1, 2011, the General Counsel to the Florida Secretary of State ruled that Florida cannot enforce the law that says only national committees may be on for president without submitting 119,316 valid signatures. First, the Secretary of State has no official knowledge of which parties are recognized by the FEC. Second, the law, if enforced, would be discriminatory because the FEC will not grant national committee status to new parties; only parties that have gone through a presidential and a congressional election can obtain it. Third, the FEC itself is not certain which parties are recognized as national committees. I talked to an FEC attorney about this on April 26, 2010. He said it is an “open question” as to whether the Natural Law Party, for example, is still a national committee.
The Socialist Party is recognized by the FEC as a national committee. But Florida won’t print its presidential candidate on the November ballot either. The Secretary of State said on September 6 that the party’s application for party status, filed on August 29, does not meet the requirements of the law. But the letter from the Secretary of State did not explain why. The Socialist Party had submitted the exact same documents in 2016 that it had filed in 2012. Thanks to Darcy Richardson for the news about the Florida Secretary of State’s flip-flop on national committee status.
UPDATE: two Florida officials kindly telephoned me on Thursday, September 8, and gave me reasons why the Socialist Party’s filing was rejected. The first reason is that the Socialist Party’s bylaws provide for dues for members. The state believes that it has the power to tell parties that they must not be organizations with requirements for members to pay dues. However, the First Amendment protects any political party’s right to establish itself as a dues-paying organization, and parties of the left in the United States and around the world have a very long tradition of requiring members to pay dues. The Socialist Party is not saying that persons cannot register into the party if they don’t pay dues. But it is saying that its dues-paying members are the only persons eligible to help choose party officers.
A New Mexico state court will hear Better for America v Winter on September 8, Thursday. The issue is whether the party petition has enough valid signatures. If Better for America gets on the ballot, it will nominate Evan McMullin for President. This is the first and, so far, only court case over ballot access filed by anyone associated with Evan McMullin’s campaign. The case is in Santa Fe District Court, d-101-cv-2016-1955.
The Secretary of State had determined that the petition lacks approximately 86 signatures from meeting the requirement of 2,565.
The North Dakota Secretary of State says all three independent presidential petitions are valid. They are for Darrell Castle, Rocky De La Fuente, and Jill Stein. The qualified parties in North Dakota are Democratic, Libertarian, and Republican.
North Dakota doesn’t have voter registration. Therefore, there is no list to check the petition signatures against. The North Dakota Secretary of State’s office has a good sense of whether a petition seem honest. If there is any doubt, a random sample of signers are sent a postcard, and if more than a few postcards comes back with a post office notation that there is no such address, then further investigation is done. This year, for these petitions, nothing seemed amiss.
