On August 5, independent presidential candidate Rocky De La Fuente asked the Maryland State Board of Elections to extend the petition deadline for independent candidates from August 1 to August 23. The rationale is that the Board changed the number of signatures from 40,603 to 10,000 on July 29, 2016. But this change was no help to any independent candidate this year, because it came so late.
On August 5, the North Carolina Democratic Party, Common Cause, and many voters, filed a federal lawsuit against the North Carolina Board of Elections, charging that the current boundaries for U.S. House elections are an unconstitutional gerrymander. Common Cause v Rucho, m.d., 1:16v-1026.
On August 5, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, a Bush Jr. appointee, ruled against Gary Johnson and Jill Stein in their debates lawsuit. The case had been filed on September 28, 2015, and is Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates, U.S. District Court, D.C., 1:15cv-1580.
Here is the 27-page decision. It says, “Because Plaintiffs have no standing and because antitrust laws govern commercial markets and not political activity, those claims fail as a matter of well-established law.”
The decision names thirteen presidential candidates who have run (outside the major parties) since the Commission on Presidential Debates has existed, who were on the ballot in states with a majority of the electoral vote, and who received less than 1%. The purpose of this information, which is in footnote three, is to show that just because a candidate gets on the ballot in states with a majority of the electoral vote, that does not mean such a candidate has much popular support. However, footnote three, based on the judge’s own research (or the research of her clerks), has factual errors. The judge relied on election returns published by the FEC, but the FEC returns do not say which candidates were on in states with a majority of electoral college votes, and the opinion’s list of candidates is erroneous.
(1) the footnote says Virgil Goode in 2012 was on ballots in states with a majority of the electoral college, but he was not; he was on in states with 257 electoral votes and 270 is a majority. (2) the footnote says that Ron Paul was on the ballot in states with a majority of the electoral vote in both 1998 and 2008, but Paul was only on in two states in 2008, and 1998 was not even a presidential election year. (3) the footnote omits Ralph Nader, even though in 2004 he received less than 1% and he was on the ballot in states containing a majority of the electoral vote (he was on in states with 278 electoral votes). (4) the footnote misspells Harry Browne’s name as “Harry Brown.” (5) the footnote misspells Howard Phillips’s name as “Howard Philips.”
Another factual error in the decision is on page 21. The decision says Ralph Forbes, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate, lost a case over debates in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1998. Actually Forbes was a candidate for U.S. House. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the decision.
FiveThirtyEight.com, a popular web page devoted to predictions about future election results, recently mentioned a presidential candidate other than the Republican and Democratic nominees. This page suggests that Gary Johnson will get 6.6% of the popular vote, and a very slight chance of receiving an electoral vote.
Mickey Kaus here calls on Wisconsin Democrats who live in U.S. House District One to choose a Republican primary ballot, instead of a Democratic primary ballot, at the August 9 primary. The reason Kaus advocates this idea is so those Democrats can vote against Speaker Paul Ryan, who does have an opponent in the Republican primary.
