Libertarian Petition in Massachusetts Has Enough Valid Signatures

Posted on by August 8, 2016
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The Massachusetts petition for the Libertarian national ticket has enough valid signatures. Massachusetts requires 10,000 signatures. The Libertarian petition had 12,587 valid signatures. President and vice-president are the only statewide offices up this year in Massachusetts. If Gary Johnson gets at least 3% of the vote in November, the Libertarian Party will again be ballot-qualified in Massachusetts. It last had that status from November 2008 to November 2010. Thanks to Bill Redpath for this news.

Some News Media Mislead Readers about the Florida Deadline for Presidential Candidates

Posted on by August 8, 2016
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Roll Call, Reuters, and Libertarian Republic on August 8 all published incorrect information about the Florida deadline for an emerging presidential candidate to get on the November ballot. Here is the Roll Call story and here is the Libertarian Republic story. Here is a Reuters story. All three claim the deadine in Florida has passed.

Actually, Florida permits a new party to qualify as late as the end of August. The authors of these stories are not fully informed because they only pay attention to the petition deadline for independent presidential candidates. The Florida independent presidential deadline is July 15, but that is irrelevant, because no independent presidential candidate has used that procedure since 1992. Instead they either create their own party, or persuade one of the many bllot-qualified parties to nominate them.

Anti-Trump Republicans Finds a Presidential Nominee

Posted on by August 9, 2016
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On August 8, a group of anti-Trump Republicans said they have found a presidential candidate. He is Evan McMullin, chief policy director for the House Republican Conference (until he resigned recently). Better for America, a group that is independent of the McMullin campaign but which is likely to nominate him, has only petitioned in two states already: New Mexico rejected its petition saying it lacked 145 valid signatures; the Arkansas petition is still being checked. If the McMullin campaign has the resources to complete petition drives very quickly, it could still petition for McMullin in almost half the states. See this story about McMullin. It is not known if McMullin will sue the states with deadlines that are in May, June, and July, but those deadlines are vulnerable to legal challenge.

UPDATE: see this story.

FURTHER UPDATE: see this story.