On February 25, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that the state must put Willie Wilson on the March 8 Democratic presidential primary ballot. He had been erroneously omitted. The law said he either needed 500 signatures from the entire state, or 100 signatures from each U.S. House district. Mississippi has four districts. Wilson chose the option of simply collecting 500 signatures, and ignoring the other method that requires 400 and a distribution requirement. He submitted 1,050 signatures.
But the state requires presidential candidates who petition to submit their petitions to the party, not to election officials. Democratic Party officials, who received his petition, erroneously thought the law required a distribution requirement, so they rejected the petition, but did not tell him until after they had already certified the list of candidates to the state. The party later admitted its mistake, but then the state said it had already printed and mailed overseas absentee votes, and that the state thought it would not be proper to have Wilson on the normal ballots when he had been left off the absentee ballots.
The Court said due process demands that Wilson be put on the regular ballots, but did not require the state to put him on the absentee ballots. The decision is 6-3. The case is Wilson v Hosemann, 2016-IA-148.
Mississippi does not require candidates discussed in the news media to submit any petition, so Hillary Clinton, Martin O’malley, and Bernie Sanders did not need to petition. The only other Democrat who did petition in Mississippi is Rocky De La Fuente, and he had already been put on the ballot because the party had accepted his petition. Thanks to Andrew Finko for this news.
