Even though Virginia Board of Elections has already determined that the Gary Johnson and Jill Stein petitions are valid, the Board doesn’t expect to have checked the other two presidential petitions until September 1 or September 2. Those other petitions are for Evan McMullin and Rocky De La Fuente.
On August 25, Georgia filed this 16-page appeal brief, in Green Party of Georgia v Kemp. This is the case in which the U.S. District Court had struck down the Georgia law that requires approximately 50,000 signatures on a petition for an independent presidential candidate, or the presidential nominee of an unqualified party. The U.S. District Court had said until the legislature acts, the requirement will be 7,500 signatures.
The plaintiffs are the Green Party and the Constitution Party. The brief attacks both parties and implies they are frivolous. The very first paragraph quotes Anderson v Celebrezze’s sentence, “It is both wasteful and confusing to encumber the ballot with the names of frivolous candidates”. By beginning its brief with that statement, the state implies that the Green Party and the Constitution Party, which filed the lawsuit, are frivolous.
The brief tries to persuade any reader that the U.S. Supreme Court has never struck down a restrictive ballot access law unless the plaintiff was supported by a large number of voters. But in reality, the U.S. Supreme Court has sometimes struck down restrictive ballot access laws when the plaintiffs were minor parties with little voter support. In 1968 the Court struck down the Ohio ballot access law in a case in which the Socialist Labor Party was a plaintiff. The SLP won the case, even though the opinion said the party only had 108 members in Ohio. In 1970 the Court summarily affirmed a 3-judge court decision that had put the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Labor Party on the New York ballot. The SWP received 5,766 votes for Governor that year, and the SLP received 3,963. In 1974 the Court struck down an Indiana ballot access law that had kept the Communist Party off the 1972 ballot. In the 1972 presidential election, the Communist Party only received 25,595 votes in the entire nation.
In 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed a 3-judge court decision that put the U.S. Labor Party nominee on the ballot in a U.S. House race in Philadelphia, Pennsyvania, in 1974. That candidate, Bernard Salera, only received 1,141 votes. In 1979 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with lower courts in Illinois who had put the Socialist Workers Party candidate for Mayor of Chicago on the 1977 special mayoral ballot. That candidate only received 5,546 votes.
The state’s brief also tries to mislead the Eleventh Circuit by claiming on page five that the Libertarian Party of Georgia frequently places nominees on the ballot for the legislature by petition. Actually, all Libertarian Party petitions for legislative candidates have failed, since 2004. The Libertarian Party is only ballot-qualified in Georgia for statewide office, not U.S. House, legislature, or county office.
On August 26, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously upheld the 2015 law that drastically increased the number of signatures needed for Libertarians to get on the Libertarian Party primary ballot. Here is the 8-page opinion in Graham v Tamburri, cv-16-143. As a result of the 2015 law, the Arizona Libertarian primary ballot of August 30, 2016, only has one Libertarian on the ballot for any partisan office.
The opinion says the state has an interest in making it more difficult for Libertarians to get on the party’s primary ballot, because the state has an interest in keeping candidates with little voter support from getting on the November ballot. The 2015 law increased the number of signatures needed for a statewide Libertarian from 133 signatures to 3,034 signatures. Only registered Libertarians and registered independents can sign a Libertarian primary petition.
The opinion says nothing at all about another Arizona law, 16-322.C, which says that a member of a qualified party that has been on the ballot for less than four years can get on his or her own party’s primary ballot with a petition of one-tenth of 1% of the number of votes received by the winning gubernatorial candidate in 2014. For 2016, that law requires 806 signatures.
The opinion fails to discuss the point that the Arizona Libertarian Party has already established that it itself has a modicum of voter support. It has been on the ballot continuously in Arizona since 1992. Therefore, logically, a Libertarian nominee does have a modicum of voter support, because he or she is supported by a group with a modicum of voter support.
The decision says nothing about the part of the 2015 bill that also drastically increased the number of write-in votes needed in a Libertarian primary for someone to be considered nominated. The disparty between the treatment of the Libertarian Party and of the Green Party is even more shocking for the write-in primary threshold. A member of the Green Party who files to be a write-in candidate in the Green Party primary can be nominated with just one write-in vote, whereas a Libertarian for statewide office this year needs 3,034 write-ins, and only registered Libertarians can cast such a vote.
In 2002, in Browne v Bayless, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s June independent presidential petition deadline. But in 2008, the Ninth Circuit ruled the June deadline unconstitutional. This shows that just because the Arizona Supreme Court upholds a ballot access restriction, that doesn’t mean a federal court can’t find the law unconstitutional. The Arizona Libertarian Party has a case pending in U.S. District Court on the same issue.
In the State Supreme Court case, the party’s U.S. Senate candidate, Frank Tamburri, filed 4,205 signatures, but a Republican, Robert Graham, challenged Tamburri’s Libertarian primary petition, and the challenge was upheld. That is why the State Supreme Court case lists the Libertarian candidate as the Defendant, not the Plaintiff.
Tom Kacich, enterprise editor of the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, here expresses his support for the August 25 U.S. District Court ruling in Gill v Scholz. That is the U.S. District Court decision that enjoined the 5% petition requirement for independent candidates for U.S. House who make a real effort to petition.
Ohio has a strange hybrid system for electing state judges. Parties nominate candidates, but there are no party labels on the general election ballot. Ohio also has laws preventing candidates for state court judge to campaign as party nominees.
On June 30, 2016, independent candidate Gerald Phillips filed a lawsuit, alleging that as to judicial elections, Ohio cannot discriminate in matter of how many signatures are needed to get on the ballot. Candidates for local state judge need 50 signatures to get on a partisan primary (or 25 signatures if the party is small). But independent candidates need 1% of the last gubernatorial vote. Phillips wants to run for Lorain County Common Pleas Judge. He submitted 151 sighnatures, and 138 were valid. But the 1% requirement eqals 778 signatures.
Election officials barred him from the general election ballot, not only because he didn’t submit 778 signatures, but because he voted in the March 2016 Republican primary. Hie lawsuit is Phillips v Lorain County Board of Elections, n.d., 1:16cv-1689. It is before Judge Solomon Oliver, a Clinton appointee.
