On August 23, the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office determined that Jill Stein’s independent presidential petition has enough valid signatures. The office is still working on several other presidential petitions.
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Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe has finished individually reviewing 13,000 applications from ex-felons who want to register to vote. See this story. He had originally made a blanket approval, but the State Supreme Court said he must study each individual application. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
The Tennessee petition deadline for independent presidential candidates is August 18. The Secretary of State has already determined that the Evan McMullin petition did not have enough signatures. See this story. Thanks to Bradley for the link.
On August 22, Better for America issued a press release, saying its opportunity to influence the presidential election as diminished, and therefore it will end its candidate recruitment and ballot access efforts. It only circulated two petitions for party status, in Arkansas and New Mexico.
Although it is believed that Better for America supports Evan McMullin for president, so far there is no official link between Better for America and the McMullin campaign. This press release does not mean that McMullin isn’t continuing to petition. The Better for America press release says it will continue to pursue constitutional litigation against bad ballot access laws. So far its only lawsuit is in New Mexico, over whether its party petition had enough valid signatures.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark H. Cohen will hear De La Fuente v Kemp on Thursday, August 25, at 2 p.m. in courtroom 1707, at the federal courthouse in Atlanta. The issue is the Georgia law that requires petitioning candidates for president to submit a list of presidential elector candidates on July 1, even though the petition isn’t due until July 12.