George Will has told an audience that he recently changed his Maryland voter registration from “Republican” to “independent.” See this story.
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Eric Fink, who hoped to be the first independent candidate for North Carolina State Senate in the history of government-printed ballots, failed to have enough valid signatures. He needed 5,255 and only had 4,269 valid. North Carolina has never had an independent candidate for any statewide office on the ballot, except for Ross Perot in 1992. It has never had an independent on for U.S. House. The requirement is 4% of the number of registered voters. Thanks to Kevin Hayes for this news.
On June 22, the Arizona Green Party sued the Secretary of State in federal court over the Secretary’s refusal to put the Green Party presidential nominee on the November ballot. The lawsuit is necessary because the party did not submit the names of its presidential elector candidates by the June 1 deadline. Arizona Green Party v Reagan, 2:16cv-2027.
This case is very likely to win. The Libertarian Party of Arizona won an almost identical lawsuit in 1996 in state court. The new lawsuit has evidence that whenever the Republican or Democratic Parties missed a similar deadline, the states always overlooked the error. Such instances occurred in the past in Iowa, Indiana, Texas, and Florida, and perhaps other states.
On June 24, a New York state trial court in Nassau County said that Philip Pidot has enough valid signatures to be on the Republican primary ballot, but he still can’t be on that ballot because it is “impossible” to add him at such a late date. Pidot v Macedo, 3448/2016. Here is the decision.
The primary is June 28. The candidate, Philip Pidot, asked that the primary for that district be postponed. The June 28 primary is only for U.S. Congress anyway, so no other offices are on the ballot except U.S. Senate. Pidot also pointed out that the June 28 primary date for congress isn’t in the election law anyway; that date stems from a 2012 lawsuit in which the state was told by a federal judge to hold its congressional primaries that date.
On June 24, Carroll Correll, a Virginia delegate to the Republican national convention, filed a lawsuit to overturn a Virginia law that requires delegates to presidential conventions to vote for the candidate who received the most votes in the Virginia presidential primary. Correll v Herring, e.d., 3:16cv-467. The law says, “Delegates shall be bound to vote on the first ballot at the national convention for the candidate receiving the most votes in the primary unless that candidate releases those delegates and alternates from such vote.”
Correll says he does not wish to vote for Donald Trump, who received the most votes in the Virginia Republican primary. Correll says he is afraid Trump will sue him if he doesn’t vote for Trump.
Generally, laws such as this law are ignored. Delegates in reality obey national party rules, not state laws that attempt to tell them how to behave at the national convention. The Correll Complaint acknowledges this indirectly, when it points out that party rules don’t permit winner-take-all results anyway, for states that have presidential primaries as early as March 1, which Virginia does. So already the law isn’t being obeyed. The U.S. Supreme Court, ever since 1972, has issued several rulings that state laws cannot control the actions of national presidential conventions.
Many of the arguments that Correll makes would logically apply equally to certain state laws that try to tell presidential electors whom they must vote for.