On May 5, New York will hold a special election in the 43rd district for Assembly. See this lengthy New York Times story about the race. Although the district is in an overwhelmingly Democratic district in Brooklyn, there is no Democratic Party nominee.
This Concord Monitor story is mainly about whether Bernie Sanders can get on the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary ballot, but the bottom portion of the article also discusses the Libertarian Party’s ballot access lawsuit against the New Hampshire law, passed in 2014, that won’t let new parties petition during odd years.
There have been many Libertarian Party lawsuits against various New Hampshire election restrictions during the last twenty years, but this is the first one that has had good coverage in New Hampshire’s daily newspapers.
New Hampshire is the only state in the nation in which no minor party or independent candidate lawsuit against a state ballot access law has ever won.
Flint, Michigan, has four candidates who filed in the non-partisan Mayoral election. The Michigan Secretary of State has told Flint election officials to remove three of them from the ballot, leaving only one candidate on the ballot. See this story. Local election officials thought the filing deadline was April 28, and advised the candidates of that date. But that was an error; the true deadline was April 21. Thanks to Nicholas Madaj for the link.
On April 30, Bernie Sanders filled out his Federal Election Commission paperwork by saying his “party affiliation” is the “Democratic Party.” See a copy of the FEC form here. Thanks to Vermont National Public Radio for the link.
On April 30, U.S. District Court Judge Martha Vazquez, a Clinton appointee, upheld New Mexico’s requirement that an independent candidate submit a petition of 3% of the last vote cast. Parker v Duran, 14-cv-617. The plaintiff was a candidate for Public Education Commission, district 4. He needed 2,196 valid signatures, and was only able to collect 1,379 signatures.
He sued, noting that a minor party nominee in New Mexico for the same position would only have needed a 1% petition, which would have been 732 signatures. He was the appointed incumbent. Because he did not get on the ballot, the voters only saw the name of one candidate on the ballot, the Democratic nominee.
The decision is of poor quality, because it fails to mention most of the precedents that held that states cannot require more signatures for independent candidates than for newly-qualifying parties. It is obvious that if the purpose of petition requirements is to keep the ballot from being too crowded, it is irrational to require more signatures for an independent candidate than for an entire new party, because a new party can place many candidates on the ballot, whereas an independent petition only adds one name to the ballot.
The decision cites cases in which 3% petitions have been upheld, but the decisions cited did not relate to states that required more signatures for independents than new parties, except for one case, Nader v Connor, from Texas in 2004. The decision does not mention Danciu v Glisson, a Florida Supreme Court decision that said states cannot require more signatures for independents than for new parties. It does not mention DeLaney v Bartlett or Greaves v State Board of Elections, both of which said North Carolina could not require more signatures for independents than for new parties. It does not mention Childrey v Bennett, which documented that when Alabama was sued for requiring more signatures for independents than new parties, the state conceded that policy was unconstitutional. Parker will probably appeal to the 10th circuit.
