On April 30, U.S. District Court Judge Martha Vazquez, a Clinton appointee, upheld New Mexico’s requirement that an independent candidate submit a petition of 3% of the last vote cast. Parker v Duran, 14-cv-617. The plaintiff was a candidate for Public Education Commission, district 4. He needed 2,196 valid signatures, and was only able to collect 1,379 signatures.

He sued, noting that a minor party nominee in New Mexico for the same position would only have needed a 1% petition, which would have been 732 signatures. He was the appointed incumbent. Because he did not get on the ballot, the voters only saw the name of one candidate on the ballot, the Democratic nominee.

The decision is of poor quality, because it fails to mention most of the precedents that held that states cannot require more signatures for independent candidates than for newly-qualifying parties. It is obvious that if the purpose of petition requirements is to keep the ballot from being too crowded, it is irrational to require more signatures for an independent candidate than for an entire new party, because a new party can place many candidates on the ballot, whereas an independent petition only adds one name to the ballot.

The decision cites cases in which 3% petitions have been upheld, but the decisions cited did not relate to states that required more signatures for independents than new parties, except for one case, Nader v Connor, from Texas in 2004. The decision does not mention Danciu v Glisson, a Florida Supreme Court decision that said states cannot require more signatures for independents than for new parties. It does not mention DeLaney v Bartlett or Greaves v State Board of Elections, both of which said North Carolina could not require more signatures for independents than for new parties. It does not mention Childrey v Bennett, which documented that when Alabama was sued for requiring more signatures for independents than new parties, the state conceded that policy was unconstitutional. Parker will probably appeal to the 10th circuit.

On April 30, Dr. David Gill, an emergency room physician, said he will be an independent candidate in 2016 for the U.S. House in the Illinois 13th district. He had been the Democratic nominee for U.S. House in the 15th district in 2004, 2006, and 2010, and he had been the Democratic nominee in 2012 in the new 13th district.

See this story, which explains why he has left the Democratic Party. When he was the Democratic nominee in 2012, the party leadership opposed him but he won the primary anyway. In the 2012 general election, he lost to Republican Rodney Davis by only 1,002 votes. The old 15th district in the 2000’s decade included Champaign, Bloomington, and much of east central Illinois. After the 2011 redistricting, the new 13th district still includes Gill’s home area of Bloomington, but otherwise it is a very different district, extending to the west, all the way to the Mississippi River, and including Springfield.

Gill considered running as an independent in 2014, when he would have needed 15,205 valid signatures. For 2016, he will need 10,514. The number is lower because turnout in 2014 was much lower than in 2012.

New Hampshire election law says anyone can be on a presidential primary ballot who pays a fee of $1,000 and fills out a Declaration of Candidacy. However, the Declaration of Candidacy since 1983 has said, “I am a registered member of the (fill in the blank) party.”

The literal language of the New Hampshire requirement that the candidate be a registered member of the party has never been applied, because 20 states don’t have registration by party. Walter Mondale, the Democratic nominee in 1984, was not a registered Democrat because Minnesota has never had registration by party (and, if it did, Mondale would have been a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party). Bill Clinton was not a registered Democrat for the same reasons; neither was Al Gore. Among Republicans, neither George H. W. Bush nor George W. Bush was a registered Republican because Texas doesn’t have registration by party.

So, in practice, the affidavit doesn’t mean what it says; what it does mean is that the candidate must hold himself out as a member of the party. See this story. It will be interesting to see how Senator Bernie Sanders handles this situation. Even though he has announced that he intends to run in Democratic presidential primaries, he has not said that he a Democrat, and he lists himself in the Congressional Directory as an independent. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.