On September 14, U.S. District Court Judge W. Keith Watkins issued an order in De La Fuente v Merrill, m.d., 2:16cv-755. The state is asked to respond to the lawsuit by September 23. A hearing will be held on October 5 at 9 a.m. in Montgomery.

After the Alabama Secretary of State’s office had checked Rocky De La Fuente’s petition and found it valid, it had listed him on its webpage as a candidate. But then the office told him he cannot appear on the ballot because he had run in the Democratic presidential primary in Alabama that year. The lawsuit argues that (1) the Secretary of State violated due process; (2) the Secretary of State ignored the 1992 precedent in which Lyndon LaRouche was not removed from the ballot as an independent even though he had run in Alabama’s Democratic presidential primary that year; (3) sore loser laws cannot be applied to presidential candidates because the true candidates in November are the candidates for presidential elector; (4) states cannot add to the constitutional qualifications to run for federal office.

Judge Watkins only entered the case on September 14. The case had originally been assigned to Judge Myron Thompson, but then it was transferred to Judge Watkins because Judge Thompson’s schedule did not permit him to act quickly on this case.

On Septmeber 7, the Florida Secretary of State refused to put Evan McMullin on the November ballot as the Independent Party nominee, on the grounds that the Independent Party of Florida (which is on the ballot) is not recognized by the Federal Election Commission as a national committee, and also that the Independent Party of Florida is not even affiliated with any national party, FEC-recognized or not. Here is the letter of rejection.

The Independent Party has been on the ballot in Florida since before 2000, but this is the first time it ever tried to nominate anyone for President.

The September 14 New York Times print edition contains a full-page ad from the Gary Johnson-Bill Weld presidential campaign, subtitled, “An Open Letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates.” It points out that polls show 62% of the public want the Libertarian ticket in the debates.

The ad also suggests that if the Commission will relax the 15% rule for the first debate, and allow three podiums, then Johnson and Weld will accede to being excluded from the later debates if they still aren’t at 15% in polls taken after the first debate.

An alternate would be to provide four podiums for the first debate, and then apply that same principle to all four of the presidential candidates who had participated in the first debate.