On Sunday, September 4, the Times-Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia endorsed Gary Johnson. The party had endorsed Republicans for President all the years 1980 through 2012. Thanks to Bryan Gilkerson for the link.
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Brian Calle and Yuri Vanetik have this op-ed in the Orange County Register and ten other daily newspapers in southern California. Calle is in charge of the editorial pages of those eleven newspapers, effective in April 2016. The op-ed deplores the policy of the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Here is information about Vanetik, the co-author.
Forbes has this commentary by David Davenport, on California’s top-two system and the 2016 U.S. Senate race. The title is “Beware Election Reforms that Eliminate Voter Choice.” He summarizes political science research that shows the California top-two system has not changed who gets elected, or how they behave once in office. Then he points out that a California Poll finding that half of all Republicans say they will leave U.S. Senate blank this year when they vote in November.
According to this story, Evan McMullin said on September 2 that he wants to debate Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. The story implies that McMullin did not mention Darrell Castle or Rocky De La Fuente, both of whom will be on the ballot in more states than McMullin will.
Rocky De La Fuente this year is being kept off the November ballot in three states because of state laws on “sore losers” and prior affiliation with a major party. See the underneath posts on Alabama and Arkansas, where no court challenges have been filed. De La Fuente does have a pending case in Pennsylvania on the same issues, although the Pennsylvania case does not involve a state that has contradicted itself in the past over whether presidential primaries are covered by sore loser laws. The Pennsylvania case is De La Fuente v Cortes, m.d., 1:16cv-1696. It has a status conference on October 31, 2016, far too late to restore De La Fuente to the ballot, but a vehicle for resolving the issue.
Article II of the U.S. Constitution makes it utterly clear that the candidates in November, for states that choose to allow popular voting for president, are the candidates for presidential elector. In the early years of the 20th century, this was obvious to everyone, because general election ballots listed all the candidates for presidential elector, and voters could vote for individual candidates for elector. Thus voters could even split their tickets, and express support for more than a single presidential candidate.
Another issue is whether the U.S. Supreme Court decision U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, from 1995, means that sore loser laws for federal office are unconstitutional for candidates for president and congress.