U.S. District Court Judge David G. Campbell will hear oral arguments in Arizona Libertarian Party v Reagan on Tuesday, May 24, at 1 p.m. This is the case that challenges the new law that greatly increased the number of signatures needed for a Libertarian to get on the Libertarian primary ballot.
The Pirate Party has three seats in Iceland’s Parliament. According to this story, it is leading in polls for the next election. Iceland awards public funding to parties based on poll results, so the Pirate Party is about to be well-funded. Thanks to Eric Garris for the link.
As already reported, earlier this year a U.S. District Court in Illinois struck down the law requiring newly-qualifying parties to run a full slate of candidates. The state is appealing. In the 7th circuit, the state’s brief is due June 16 and the Libertarian Party brief is due July 15. The dates would have been earlier, but the attorney for the state obtained an extention because he said he has too many other cases to work on.
A professional survey firm has been hired to ask each delegate to the Libertarian Party national convention whom he or she intends to support. It is not known who is paying for the survey.
USA Today has this article about the order of candidates on New Jersey primary ballots. The New Jersey primary, for President and all other partisan office, is June 7. The article explains that in most counties in New Jersey, the ballot has two dominant columns, and every candidate who doesn’t qualify to appear in one of the two visible columns is then placed in a third column, over the right, that is not immediately visible to many voters.
For presidential primary candidates, the odds of being in one of the two better columns depends on whether that presidential primary candidate is supported by various candidates running for partisan county office in the same primary. The article highlights Bernie Sanders supporters who filed to run in the Democratic primary for various county offices, not because they want the job, but to help Sanders appear in one of the better columns. No other state has such a ballot format policy for primary elections.
General election ballots in most counties in New Jersey have the same characteristic. Democratic and Republican nominees each have their own conspicuous column, and every other candidate is squished into the third column with no partisan party heading.
