On August 1, Rocky De La Fuente voluntarily dismissed his lawsuit against the Florida law on how an independent presidential candidate gets on the ballot. He no longer needs the lawsuit, because he is the Reform Party nominee and the Reform Party is on the ballot in Florida.
On August 16, the Nevada Green Party filed a federal lawsuit over Nevada’s June 3 petition deadline for new parties. Nevada Green Party v Cegavske, 2:16cv-1951. The party had submitted its petition by the deadline, but was told after several weeks that it did not have enough valid. It then submitted another 1,200, but they wee not accepted since the deadline had passed.
The lawsuit is based on the fact that in 1992, when the deadline was June 10, a U.S. District Court enjoined it and said it was too early. That case was Fulani v Lau.
On August 16, the Georgia Secretary of State said that the Green Party presidential petition doesn’t have enough valid signatures. The state says only 5,925 signatures are valid. The requirement is 7,500. See this story.
This is the second time Georgia has rejected a presidential petition this year. Georgia rejected Rocky De La Fuente’s petition because he didn’t submit the names of his presidential elector candidates by July 1. De La Fuente has a lawsuit pending over whether the separate earlier deadline for presidential electors is constitutional or not.
On August 16, the national Working Families Party announced that its members had voted to endorse Hillary Clinton for President. See this story, which says she won 68%. Most who did not support her chose “no endorsement”. The endorsement process is separate from the nomination process, and each state Working Families Party that is on the ballot will decide whether to nominate her. In the past, the only state unit of the Working Families Party that has nominated anyone for President is the New York WFP.
It is possible that the WFP of Oregon and South Carolina will put Hillary Clinton on the ballot as their nominee. The Connecticut WFP will not, because that would have meant gathering 7,500 valid signatures, which the party did not attempt.
August 15 is the Utah deadline for presidential candidates of unqualified parties, and independent presidential candidates, to submit their petitions. The state requires 1,000. Five petitions were submitted: Rocky De La Fuente, Alysson Kennedy (Socialist Workers Party), Evan McMullin, Monica Moorehead (Workers World Party), and Jill Stein (Green Party).
The qualified parties in Utah are Constitution, Democratic, Independent American, Libertarian, and Republican. If they all have a presidential nominee, and all the independent petitions are valid, Utah will have ten presidential candidates on the November ballot.
