On May 16, 2016, Rocky De La Fuente, an independent presidential candidate, sued North Carolina over the requirement that independent presidential candidates must submit 89,366 valid signatures by June 9. The requirement is 2% of the last gubernatorial vote. De La Fuente v Amoroso, 1:16cv-470, middle district. On June 15, his Complaint was amended. The original filing had sued the wrong Defendant.

The case is assigned to Judge Thomas D. Schroeder, a Bush Jr. appointee. This is the first lawsuit to challenge the North Carolina 2% petition requirement for an independent presidential candidate. Only once in history has any independent candidate successfully met the requirement. Ross Perot in 1992 is the only independent presidential candidate who ever succeeded in getting on the ballot, in the entire history of North Carolina government-printed ballots. Back when Perot did it in 1992, it was even worse; it was 2% of the total number of registered voters.

The lawsuit will depend partly on the March 2016 U.S. District Court decision from Georgia that struck down a petition of approximately 50,000 signatures for independent presidential candidates and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties.

The Nevada Green Party is monitoring Clark County election officials, as the party’s petition is checked for validity. The party needs 5,431 valid signatures and submitted approximately 8,500. Clark County, which has over half the state’s population, did a random sample of the signatures, which was indeterminate. So now all the party’s signatures in that county are being reviewed.

A bill will be introduced in the 2017 session of the Montana legislature to replace the petition requirement for presidential primary candidates with a filing fee. The petition is 500 signatures. The fee would probably be $4,000. See this story. Thanks to Mike Fellows for the link.