This Colorado newspaper story discusses the November 8 ballot in Colorado, which lists 22 presidential candidates. No state in history ever before had more than 16 presidential candidates on a general election ballot, and that old record was also set by Colorado in both 2012 and 2008. Except for Colorado, the largest number of presidential candidates in November was the Iowa 1992 ballot, which had 14.
Reason TV has this twelve-minute interview with Richard Winger (me) on ballot access.
The Chicago Tribune, on September 30, endorsed Gary Johnson for President. Here is the editorial.
On September 29, Arkansas filed a notice of appeal with the Eighth Circuit in Libertarian Party of Arkansas v Martin, 16-3794. The U.S. District Court had struck down a 2015 law that says newly-qualifying parties must nominate all their candidates (except president) an entire year before the election.
It takes chutzpah for Arkansas to continue to defend this law. In 1977, a U.S. District Court in Arkansas had struck down the April petition deadline for new parties to get on the ballot. The state did not appeal that decision and the legislature moved the deadline to May. But in 1987 the state forgot why it had done that, and moved the deadline to an even earlier month, January of an election year. That was struck down by a U.S. District Court in 1996, in a case filed by the Reform Party. The legislature had then moved the deadline back to May.
But, again, the legislature forgot why it had done that, and in 2015 moved the deadline to an incredibly early September of the year before the election. The 2015 deadline for a new party petition has not been challenged. But because it is obvious that it would be unconstitutional if challenged, the state does not have “clean hands” (a legal term) in the entire area of treatment of newly qualifying parties. The state has shown bad faith by ignoring previous rulings concerning deadlines. The case is Libertarian Party of Arkansas v Martin.
The Missouri Press Association is sponsoring candidate debates for Governor and U.S. Senator. They will be televised on C-SPAN and live-streamed. All ballot-listed candidates for those two offices are invited. See this story.
