Canada election officials will print “ZNone of the Above” on the ballot in an upcoming provincial election in Ontario. See this story. An individual, who is running, had changed his name so that will be printed. Because candidates go on the ballot in alphabetical order, the “z” guarantees that he will be at the bottom of the list, which of course he desires.
Former U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel has virtually endorsed Michael Bloomberg as an independent presidential candidate, even though Bloomberg has not declared. See this New York Times story. Hagel was a Republican from Nebraska, but he was also President Obama’s Defense Secretary.
New York Assemblymember Michael Cusick (D-Staten Island) has introduced AB 9108. It moves the primary for state and local office from September to June, to match the date of the congressional primary. Unfortunately it would also move the deadline for independent candidate petitions from August 23 to June 7. This would give New York the nation’s second earliest deadline for independent presidential candidate petitions.
Courts have invalidated June petition deadlines for independent candidates in Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, and South Dakota. The New York bill will be heard in the Assembly Elections Committee during the week of February 1-5. The provision in the bill moving the deadline two and one-half months earlier is entirely unnecessary for the bill’s general purpose of merging the state and congressional primaries. It is important that New York activists oppose the change to the independent candidate petition deadline, and publicize this part of the bill.
In 2007, Raymond Burrington died and left the Libertarian Party $217,000. The Federal Election Commission would not let the party have the money all at once. Instead, because the McCain-Feingold law limits the amount of money an individual can give to a party (whether the donor is alive or dead), the money had to be parceled out in chunks of about $30,000. The Libertarian Party sued the FEC to get a ruling that this part of the McCain-Feingold law, as applied to bequests, is unconstitutional. But the court proceedings took so long, by the time the case was ready for a decision, seven long years after the death of the donor, the money had been given to the party.
On January 25, 2016, the party filed a similar lawsuit, over a new bequest. Joseph Shaber of Arizona died on August 23, 2014, and left the party $235,575. The new lawsuit is Libertarian National Committee v FEC, 1:16-121. It is assigned to Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee. The FEC will only let the party have $33,400 per year, but the party wants the money now, instead of waiting for seven years. This case won’t take as long as the last one, because the first case established some procedural rules for how cases like this are handled.
This Luntz Global Poll, released on January 28, suggests that Michael Bloomberg would be a formidable candidate if he ran as an independent, no matter who the major party nominees are. Thanks to several people for this link.
