On September 23, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in Arizona Green Party v Reagan, 14-15976, saying that the party’s challenge to the February petition deadline for new parties fails because the Green Party submitted no evidence that the deadline is harmful. The decision is only 18 pages long and lays great emphasis on the party’s lack of evidence.

Page 14 says, “We do not know how difficult it was for the Green Party to collect the required signatures, how much the signature-gathering effort cost, whether petition efforts diverted the Party’s resources from other endeavors, whether the ‘mind of the general public’ was diverted from the election at the time the Party sought to collect the signatures, how difficult it has been for new parties to comply with the deadline historically, or even if the Party attempted to comply with the deadline at all. Without evidence, the burdens identified in the Green Party’s complaint are purely speculative.

The case arose in the 2014 election, when the party was unable to obtain the needed 23,041 valid signatures by the February 28 deadline. It did finish the petition by May 2014, and sued at that time. The petition submitted in May 2014 did have enough valid signatures, and the state used the petition to put the party on the ballot for the 2016 election, so the effort wasn’t entirely wasted.

On September 23, David Gill, the independent candidate for U.S. House, 13th district of Illinois, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restore him to the ballot. He had been put on the ballot on August 25 by a U.S. District Court, but then removed from the ballot by the Seventh Circuit. The case is Gill v Scholz.

The Commission on Presidential Debates often argues that it is not an arm of government and therefore has a right to set its own standards on who can be admitted to the general election presidential debates. However, federal law mentions the Commission on Presidential Debates and says that the CPD’s decision on whom to invite will help determine federal government policy toward particular presidential candidates.

The federal law is 3 USC 102, and includes a 2010 amendment titled the “Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010”, P.L. 111-283; 124 Stat. 3046. The federal law now reads “the Administrator shall ensure that any candidate determined to be an eligible candidate…has demonstrated a significant level of public support in national public opinion polls…and consider whether other national organizations have recognized the candidate as being among the principal contenders for the general election to such offices, including whether the Commission on Presidential Debates has determined that the candidate is eligible to participate in the candidate debates for the general election to such office.”

The September 16 letter from the General Services Agency to Gary Johnson, denying a national security briefing to Johnson and his national security advisors, specifically says one reason he cannot have such a briefing is that the Commission on Presidential Debates has not admitted him.