Oliver Hall, head of the Center for Competitive Democracy, has this op-ed in the August 19 Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette, the state’s largest newspaper. It explains how minor party and independent candidates enhance U.S. elections.
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On August 18, the South Dakota Secretary of State said that the Libertarian Party nominee for Public Service Commissioner, Ryan Gaddy, cannot have his name on the November ballot because the Secretary believes that he wasn’t registered as a Libertarian at the time of his nomination.
All qualified parties in South Dakota nominate for certain statewide offices by party convention. The Libertarian Party state convention nominated Gaddy and others on August 9, a Saturday. Gaddy filled out a voter registration form changing his registration to “Libertarian” at the convention, before he was nominated. But the change of registration did not arrive in the elections office until August 13. South Dakota law does not permit parties to nominate non-members, and the Secretary has ruled that the change in registration was not in effect until it was received.
It is possible Gaddy and the Libertarian Party will sue to reinstate his name on the ballot. In 1986 the U.S. Supreme Court stated in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut that the First Amendment’s Freedom of Association clause protects the choice of a political party to nominate a non-member if it wishes. Courts in Colorado and New Mexico have struck down state laws on duration of party membership, in lawsuits brought by the Colorado Democratic Party and the New Mexico Green Party.
Michael Peroutka, the Constitution Party’s presidential nominee in 2004, won this year’s Republican primary for a seat on the Anne Arundel County Council. This story in the Baltimore Post-Examiner, an on-line news source, explains the distress his candidacy is causing Maryland Republican Party leaders.
On August 18, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Piersol granted an injunction, letting independent gubernatorial candidate Michael Myers replace the Lieutenant Governor running mate on the November 2014 ballot. Piersol is a Clinton appointee. This is the first time a federal court in South Dakota has ruled favorably in a ballot access case since 2000. The case is Myers v Gant, 4:14cv-4121.
Myers argued successfully that because South Dakota lets qualified parties replace a nominee who has withdrawn, therefore the Constitution requires that independent candidate tickets must have the same flexibility. The original Lieutenant Governor named on Myers’ ballot access petition had withdrawn and Myers had sued to get the replacement’s name on the ballot.
In 1980, John B. Anderson had not chosen his actual vice-presidential running mate until August 27, after he had finished petitioning in South Dakota and almost all states. South Dakota in 1980 was one of only four states that wouldn’t let Anderson replace the stand-in vice-presidential running mate with the actual vice-presidential candidate, former Governor Patrick Lucey of Wisconsin. Anderson had sued three of the states that wouldn’t let him replace the Vice-President and had won all three lawsuits. But he didn’t get around to suing South Dakota, so this is the first time substitution rights for independents have been recognized in South Dakota.
Ed Garvey of Madison, Wisconsin, has this op-ed in The Capital Times, arguing that Wisconsin should replace its open primary with a semi-closed or closed primary.