On August 31, the Connecticut Secretary of State determined that the Green Party statewide petition is valid. It has nominees for President and U.S. Senate. So far the Connecticut Secretary of State has not finished checking the Libertarian petition or the De La Fuente petition.
The Greensboro, North Carolina News & Record has this op-ed by editorial writer Doug Clark. It criticizes North Carolina ballot access laws that relate to minor parties and independent candidates.
The piece says that Jill Stein is on the ballot in 40 jurisdictions. That is correct, as of August 31, but by election day it will probably be 44, 45, or 46.
On August 30, U.S. District Court Judge Roberto Lange ruled from the bench in De La Fuente v Krebs, 3:16cv-3035. He said the state cannot invalidate signatures because the signer failed to fill in the “county” blank. The rationale is that no city or town in South Dakota is partly in one county and party in another. Therefore, the Secretary of State can easily know which county the signer lives in, by seeing what town or city the signer shows. The Secretary of State uses random sampling so the validation process is not very difficult for a petition that only requires 2,775 valid signatures.
But Judge Lange upheld another restriction, which is that sheets of signatures are entirely invalid if the Notary Public made a technical error when notarizing that sheet. De La Fuente had argued that notarization is not needed. But in South Dakota, notaries don’t charge to process ballot access petitions, so the judge felt that the notarization requirement is not a severe burden.
De La Fuente doesn’t quite have enough valid signatures, even though he won on the issue of signatures without a county listed. The case remains alive and it is likely De La Fuente will amend his complaint to also attack the South Dakota ban on out-of-state circulators for candidate petitions. It will be difficult for South Dakota to defend that restriction, because South Dakota allows out-of-state circulators to work on a petition to qualify a new party.
In 2013, the North Carolina legislature passed a bill restricting ease of voting. Specifically, it eliminated a lengthy early voting period; it ended the ability of 17-year-olds to pre-register (so that they would automatically be on the rolls as of their 18th birthday); it ended the ability of voters to cast a provisional ballot away from their home precinct; it ended same-day registration; and it required voters at the polls to show photo-ID (on the ID issue, the 2013 law had been very strict, but in 2015 the legislature had softened it and let voters who swore they could not get such ID vote anyway).
On July 29, 2016, all of these restrictions were enjoined by the 4th Circuit. On August 31, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to upset the action of the 4th Circuit. The case in the U.S. Supreme Court is State of North Carolina v North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, 16A168. The state had asked for U.S. Supreme Court action on August 15. The U.S. Supreme Court had asked the NAACP to respond by August 25, and the NAACP complied. So, after pondering for six days, the U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 on whether to sustain the 4th circuit. In a tie, the ruling of the lower court stands.
It happens that all three members of the 4th circuit panel had been appointees of Democratic presidents. If, by chance, the 4th circuit panel had consisted of Republican appointees, probably the 4th circuit decision would have gone the other way. Then, if the NAACP had asked for U.S. Supreme Court help, that vote surely also would have been 4-4. This case illustrates that having a U.S. Supreme Court with only eight members causes outcomes to be determined by the Appeals Courts, and by the random events that determine which judges get any particular case. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the news.
On Wednesday, September 7, the West Virginia Supreme Court will hear Wells v Miller, 16-0779. The issue is whether anyone who holds the constitutional qualifications for an elected office may be an independent candidate, or whether only registered independents can be independent candidates.
There is no law in West Virginia limiting who may be an independent candidate. But all candidates must fill out a declaration of candidacy, and the state uses the same form for members of parties running in a primary, or for independents and the nominees of unqualified parties running in the general election. Because that form happens to ask for “party”, some individuals believe that means when an independent fills out the form, if he is not “independent” by registration, he or she can’t run.
The case arose when Erik Wells petitioned to run as an independent candidate for Kanawha County Clerk. He is a registered Democrat, and even though he had enough valid signatures, he was challenged. A lower state court removed him from the November ballot. If he loses the case, there are about a dozen other independent candidates this year who will also be removed from the November ballot, even though they weren’t challenged. An interesting detail is that Wells is the husband of the West Virginia Secretary of State, Natalie Tennant.
Many members of major parties have run for president as minor party or independent candidates in the past, including Robert La Follette in 1924, William Lemke in 1936, Strom Thurmond in 1948, George Wallace in 1968, and John Anderson in 1980.
