As of noon, Friday, September 30, the California Republican Party still hasn’t submitted its list of presidential elector candidates to the Secretary of State. The American Independent Party has already submitted its list of elector candidates. The lists are due October 1, but because that is Saturday, the actual deadline is Monday, October 3.

Until the Republican list is submitted, the public won’t know whether the names of the presidential elector candidates for each party’s slate match. Both parties nominated Donald Trump for President. But just because two parties nominate the same presidential candidate, it does not follow that each party necessarily files the same slate of presidential electors as the other party. This year in New York, both the Independence Party and the Libertarian Party nominated Gary Johnson. But each party submitted separate lists of elector candidates.

If the two California slates do not match, it will be impossible for California to know how many votes each candidate for presidential elector received. U.S. Code Title 3, section 6, requires each state to tell the National Archives how many valid votes each candidate for presidential elector receives. California does not let voters choose which slate of electors to vote for. Trump is on the ballot with only one box for the voter to choose. He is on as “Donald J. Trump, Republican, American Independent.” By contrast, in New York, the ballot has two Johnson squares: one square for voters to choose the Independence Party electors, and another square for the voters to choose the Libertarian electors.

Reason TV has this twelve-minute interview with Richard Winger (me) on ballot access.

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.