The Missouri deadline for petitions for independent candidates, and previously unqualified parties, was August 1. The only statewide petition submitted was for the Green Party. The Libertarian and Constitution Parties are already on the ballot. Missouri requires 10,000 signatures, and the Green Party submitted over 25,000.
August 2 was the New York deadline for petitions for president, for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties. The Libertarian Party submitted 32,617 signatures to meet the 15,000-signature requirement. So far, no other group has filed for President. The Green Party is already ballot-qualified in New York.
However, petitions that are postally mailed are valid if they are postmarked by August 2, so there may be more filings. Rocky De La Fuente expects to file by postal mail today.
This may be the first presidential election since 1956 in which no party with “socialist” or “socialism” will have been on the ballot in New York. In 1956, the Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Workers Party both filed New York petitions, but they were both challenged and removed.
Probably the November 2016 New York ballot will list Hillary Clinton three times, and will list Donald Trump four times.
Here is a link to the New York State Board of Elections web page. It lists presidential filings, both by petition, and from ballot-qualified parties. So far the Republican Party is the only qualified party that has certified its presidential nominee to the Board. The link says Lynn Kahn, an independent presidential candidate, has filed, but it also shows that she only turned in 21 pages. Even though the page now says “valid”, the usual practice for the State Board of Elections is to later count the signatures, and if the number of signatures is below the legal requirement, the Board rejects the petition. Thanks to Mark Axinn for the link.
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.
