Colorado voters will see Amendment 71 on their November 2016 ballot. It would say that a constitutional initiative needs the signatures of 2% of the voters in each one of the 35 State Senate districts. This newspaper editorial recommends a “no” vote, because such a law would make it virtually impossible to qualify a statewide constitutional initiative.
The American Delta Party is now a ballot-qualified party in Delaware, but it attained this status too late to place nominees on the November 2016 ballot. A party is qualified in Delaware if it has at least 654 registered members. The American Delta Party has 854, so probably it will have nominees on the 2018 ballot if it is still active in 2018. See the state’s October 1, 2016 registration tally here.
The American Delta Party was created by Rocky De La Fuente. The party obtained these registered members before the August 20 deadline for new parties to become qualified. But the state refused to process approximately half of those new registrants immediately, because they were signed by voters who were switching parties. Delaware won’t let people switch parties during the three months before any primary, but does process such applications after the primary is over.
The minor parties that were already on the ballot have gained registration in the last two months at a high rate. Green Party registration since August 1 is up 24.2%; Libertarian is up 13.5%; Independent Party is up 9.1%. Thanks to Brady Olson for notifying me that the new Delaware registration data was available.
In August 2016, this news source and other news sources reported that there would be 23 presidential candidates on the November 2016 Colorado ballot, easily the most in history for any state. The previous record, 16 candidates, had also been set by Colorado, in both 2012 and 2008.
However, one of the presidential candidates listed as being on the Colorado ballot this year, Michael Deeks of the USA76 Party, will not be on in November. He did not pay the $1,000 filing fee. The Colorado Secretary of State’s web page in August had listed all candidates who filed, regardless of whether their filing was complete and regardless of whether they had yet paid the fee.
According to this story, U.S. Senate Bernie Sanders has not endorsed anyone for Governor of Vermont. But he has already endorsed two Progressive Party nominees, one of which is David Zuckerman, the party’s nominee for Lieutenant Governor (in Vermont, Governor is elected separately from Lieutenant Governor). The Progressive Party is not running anyone for Governor.
Although the Vermont Democratic Party has also nominated Zuckerman, Zuckerman considers himself a member of the Progressive Party. This is apparent for many reasons, one of which is that he is listed on the November 2016 ballot as “Progressive, Democrat”. In Vermont, which allows two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate, the candidate’s own party is always listed first, followed by the name of any other party that also nominated him or her.
On October 2, Research & Polling released a presidential poll for New Mexico, taken after the September 26 presidential debate. The results: Hillary Clinton 35%, Donald Trump 31%, Gary Johnson 24%, undecided or other 8%. See this story.
