The New York Independence Party has nominated Gary Johnson for President. This is a surprise, because the leaders of the Independence Party have in the past been very friendly with Donald Trump. The Independence Party sent out a press release on September 9 announcing its choice.

This means that Johnson will be on the ballot twice in New York state. His line on the Independence Party will be sixth on the ballot. His name on the Libertarian line will be ninth on the ballot.

When the Federal Election Commission looks at the election returns to see if Gary Johnson got 5% of the vote, which would make his campaign eligible for general election funding in December 2016, the FEC will count his votes on the Independence line as well as on the Libertarian line.

Other parties in New York that have made presidential nominations so far are the Conservative Party, which has nominated Donald Trump; and the Working Families Party, which has nominated Hillary Clinton. The Reform Party is expected to nominate Donald Trump, but it has not yet sent in its paperwork. Also the final paperwork for the Women’s Equality Party is not in yet. Two preliminary filings for the Women’s Equality Party are in conflict. One nominates Lynn Kahn and the other nominates Hillary Clinton.

The Connecticut Secretary of State has determined that Rocky De La Fuente’s independent presidential petition does not have enough valid signatures. The law requires 7,500. Information about how close he came is not now available, but this post will be amended when that information is obtained.

On September 9, three judges of the Seventh Circuit granted a stay of the U.S. District Court order in Gill v Scholz. This means that Dr. David Gill, independent candidate for U.S. House, 13th district of Illinois, is now off the ballot. The U.S. District Court had put him on, on the basis that a petition of 5% of the last vote, combined with only 90 days to collect the signatures, is probably unconstitutional.

The three judges of the Seventh Circuit who took this action are Richard Posner, a Reagan appointee; David F. Hamilton, an Obama appointee; and William J. Bauer, a Ford appointee. Judge Bauer is not a full-time judge and will turn age 90 next week.

Judge Bauer had a good record on ballot access in the 1970’s, but not in the last decade. Judge Posner has consistently been hostile to ballot access plaintiffs. In 1985 he upheld Indiana’s ballot access law, which is so strict, Indiana is one of only four states in which Ralph Nader was never able to get on the ballot. In 2004 he refused injunctive relief for Ralph Nader against the June petition deadline in Illinois, even though that same deadline had been enjoined in 2000. And in 2008 he upheld the Illinois law for independent candidates for U.S. House in the Stevo case. The issue in that case was that Illinois requires exactly 5,000 signatures for independent candidates for U.S. House, so the plaintiff, who needed 10,285 because he was not running in a year that ended in “2”, argued that there was no state interest in ever requiring more than 5,000 signatures for that office.

Judge Hamilton is the newest judge on the court. He had only had one ballot access case; he voted to uphold the requirement that candidates for Mayor of Chicago submit 12,500 signatures. However, that requirement is met frequently; there has never been a Mayoral election in Chicago since that law was in effect when there weren’t at least five candidates on the ballot.