Politico has this story on how the Florida Secretary of State changed the ballot access rules on September 7, blocking several ballot-qualified parties from being on the presidential ballot.
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On September 16, the Texas Secretary of State reversed a previous decision, and now says that write-ins for Evan McMullin will be counted. Here is the revised write-in list.
Here is a newspaper story. Apparently the original list included one elector who had to be replaced. Thanks to a commenter for this news.
The New York State Board of Elections has released the list of candidates who will be on the ballot for U.S. Senate and U.S. House in November. In the U.S. Senate race, the only names are the Democratic, Republican, Green, and Libertarian nominees.
For U.S. House, the following parties have nominees who are not the nominees of either major party:
Green Party in four districts: 5, 11, 13, 21
Working Families Party in two districts: 1, 24
Independence Party in one district: 1
Conservative Party in one district: 15
Reform Party in one district: 22
The only ballot-qualified party that did not have any nominees other than the nominees of one of the major parties is the Women’s Equality Party, which only nominated individuals who are also Democratic Party nominees.
Only two candidates got on the ballot who are not nominees of any qualified party. They are two independents, one in the 13th district and one in the 16th.
Occasionally, in states that allow two parties to jointly nominate the same presidential candidate, the presidential elector candidates of one party are different that the presidential elector candidates of the other party. When this happens, the vote for the two competing slates can’t be added together.
This year in New York, the Independence Party and the Libertarian Party both nominated Gary Johnson, but the two slates of electors are different people. If Johnson were close to carrying New York, having his vote split into two separate slates would ruin his chances of electing either slate. But this is only a theoretical problem, because it seems unlikely in the extreme that Johnson could carry New York even if both slates were the same names.
This problem existed for Robert La Follette in 1924 in Montana and Oklahoma. He was nominated by three parties in Montana, and two parties in Oklahoma, but the parties didn’t submit the same electors. La Follette came fairly close to carrying Montana. He polled 65,876 votes, for second place behind Calvin Coolidge with 74,138. But if La Follette had received the most votes, he still probably would not have won any electoral votes.
It is too late for the Libertarian candidates for presidential elector to withdraw and be replaced by Independence Party electors. The deadline for that was September 5. The New York Independence Party hadn’t even nominated anyone for president at that point. See this Politico story. Thanks to several people for the link.
On September 16, the Second Circuit issued a six-page order in Martins v Pidot, 16-3028, explaining why it canceled the Republican primary for U.S. House, 3rd district. The three judges had ruled from the bench three days ago but had not yet explained why. The U.S. District Court had ordered a new Republican primary because one of the two candidates, Philip Pidot, had been excluded from the ballot even though he had enough valid signatures.
The thrust of the Second Circuit order, although not expressed clearly, is that because Pidot lost in state court, he can’t go to federal court. Thanks to Thomas Jones and Rick Hasen for the link.