South Dakota holds its presidential primaries on June 7. The only Democrats on the South Dakota ballot will be Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The only Republicans will be Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Donald Trump. No other state has so few major party candidates on the presidential primary ballots. The major parties chose candidates that would be on the ballots automatically. There is an alternate petition route for other candidates, but no one used it.
On March 31, U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock heard four hours of testimony and argument in Libertarian Party of Maine v Dunlap, the case that challenges the Maine deadline for a new party to submit at least 5,000 voter registration cards showing the signers as members of that party. The hearing is not complete and will resume next week. See this story. The Libertarian Party argues that the deadline of December 1 in the year before the election is far too early to be constitutional. In 1854, the Republican Party was formed July 6 and went on to win a plurality in the U.S. House of Representatives. That was before there were any ballot access laws or any government-printed ballots.
The news story says the hearing was “heated.”
On March 31, the Republican National Committee filed an amicus curiae brief in Libertarian Party of New Hampshire v Gardner, the lawsuit challenging the 2014 law that made it illegal to collect signatures on a party petition during an odd year.
The Republican National Committee amicus says similar restrictions were upheld in other states, but none of their cited cases is on point. The Republican brief cites Green Party of Arkansas v Martin, but that was a case about how a party remains on the ballot, not on how it gets on. The brief cites Rogers v Corbett, a Pennsylvania case, but that was not about timing of petitioning; it was a challenge to the concept that Pennsylvania requires non-members of the party to help the party choose its nominees. The Republican brief cites Stone v Board of Elections, but that was about candidate petitions in non-partisan city elections, not petitions to create a new party. The Republicans cite Barr v Galvin, a Massachusetts case, but that was about whether a presidential candidate petition could use stand-ins. The Republican brief cites a 1988 Oklahoma case, Rainbow Coalition for Election Board, and that case did uphold a one-year period for collecting the party petition, but New Hampshire only allows seven months, not one year. Also Oklahoma let the group choose its own one-year petitioning window; New Hampshire does not.
The Los Angeles Times has this story, trying to determine what the results will be for California congressional and legislative races if the Republican voter turnout is especially high in June.
Ron Paul, on television recently, said that voters who agree with the Green Party or the Libertarian Party on the issues ought to vote for those parties. Paul also said that he himself will not vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. See this story.
Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Rand Paul plans a “major” endorsement on Friday, April 1. See this story.
