On August 1, the Ohio Libertarian filed asked the Sixth Circuit again to put it on the ballot. This request is something that the party must do, if it is to later ask the U.S. Supreme Court for the same relief. Assuming the Sixth Circuit grants the party no relief, then the party will ask the U.S. Supreme Court for an order.
However, on August 2, the Sixth Circuit asked Ohio to respond to the August 1 brief by August 8.
On August 1, the Arkansas Libertarian Party asked Arkansas Secretary of State Mark Martin to put four of its nominees for the legislature on the November ballot. They are the four candidates nominated by the party’s second nominating convention, held in February 2016. The party had also nominated many candidates at its first nominating convention in October 2015.
The party recently won a lawsuit against the 2015 law that said the party had to nominate all its candidates at least a year before the election. But the judge who ruled the law unconstitutional declined to put the candidates nominated in the second convention on the ballot.
The New Jersey Elections office has received seven petitions for President that appear to be valid. They are for independent presidential candidate Rocky De La Fuente, and the presidential candidates of these unqualified parties: Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Socialist Workers, Socialism & Liberation, and Workers World.
Two petitions were rejected. The Socialist Party petition did not have enough valid signatures. The Prohibition Party petition was never checked, because the state elections office couldn’t find all of the party’s presidential elector candidates in the state database. New Jersey does not require presidential elector candidates to be registered voters. However the state theorized that some of the Prohibition Party presidential elector candidates might theoretically be felons, and asked the party to provide a copy of the drivers license for each candidate for presidential elector. The Prohibition Party did not comply with that request.
On August 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, enjoined a Federal Election Commission regulation that bars unauthorized political committees that lack any connection to fundraising from using the name of a candidate in the committee’s web page title, or social media page title. Pursuing America’s Greatness v FEC, 15-5264. Here is the 18-page decision.
The decision says if the FEC is worried about confusion over whether a web page is the official voice of that candidate, the FEC is free to require such pages to post disclaimers, saying, “This website is not candidate Doe’s Official Webpage.” The decision points out that the FEC already had an exception to its rule, and that if a web page is clearly opposed to a particular candidate, that type of web page may use the candidate’s name in its title. The decision depends partly on the U.S. Supreme Court decision from last year, Reed v Town of Gilbert, striking down a town ordinance that said signs on certain subjects had to be smaller and taken down more frequently than other types of signs.
The plaintiff had lost in U.S. District Court. The plaintiff had wanted to have a web page titled, “I like Mike Huckabee”, even though it was not the official Huckabee campaign web page. The decision is by Judge Thomas Griffith, a Bush Jr. appointee, and is signed by Judges Brett Kavanaugh, a Bush Jr. appointee, and A. Raymond Randolph, a Bush Sr. appointee.
The Atlantic has this analysis by Russell Berman and Andrew McGill, using data to show that minor party and independent presidential candidates in the modern era do better in states in which there is no doubt which major party presidential candidate will carry that state.
This is a common-sense observation, and demonstrates that many U.S. voters are aware of the electoral college and (except in Maine and Nebraska) its winner-take-all rules.
