John McAfee, who had previously said he would run for president in 2016 as the nominee of his Cyber Party, has now said he will join the Libertarian Party and seek its presidential nomination. See this story in USA Today.
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Tre Hargett has been Secretary of State of Tennessee since before the 2012 election. In 2012, Gary Johnson was on the Republican presidential primary ballot in Tennessee, and he also qualified as an independent presidential candidate in Tennessee in November 2012.
But this year, he has posted a comment on his web page, saying once a candidate’s name appears on the presidential primary ballot, he cannot qualify as an independent presidential candidate. When he was asked why he had a different policy in 2012, he said he put Johnson’s name on the November ballot “in an abundance of caution.” He said Tennessee was being sued over ballot access in 2012. It is true that in early 2012, a U.S. District Cort struck down the state’s requirements for new parties to get on the ballot, but that lawsuit had absolutely nothing to do with the Libertarian Party, or independent candidates, or the state’s sore loser laws. Furthermore, that same minor party ballot access case is still pending. The Sixth Circuit remanded it back to the U.S. District Court, which could issue an opinion at any time.
Hargett also did not explain why Tennessee let John Anderson on the ballot in November 1980 as an independent, even though Anderson had run in the Republican presidential primary in Tennessee in 1980. This is one more sad example of the arbitrary application of ballot access interpretation in the United States.
There are two reasons why states cannot impose sore loser laws on presidential primaries. One is that Article II of the U.S. Constitution, and federal law, makes it clear that the presidential electors are the true candidates in November. Then, in December, the electors choose the president. That is why the November ballot in Tennessee says, for example, “Electors for Mitt Romney”, “Electors for Barack Obama”, etc.
The other reason is that no one is defeated for a presidential nomination in the presidential primary of a single state. Hargett is a Republican.
The Green Party in the United Kingdom is challenging a recent decision by the British Broadcasting Corporation to give free air time during 2016 to five political parties, but not the Green Party. See this story.
On December 23, attorneys for the state of Georgia filed this brief in Green Party of Georgia v Secretary of State, n.d., 1:12cv-1822. The case was filed in 2012 and the co-plaintiffs are the Green Party and the Constitution Party. It challenges the petition required in Georgia for previously unqualified parties and independent candidates to get on the November ballot for President. For 2016, the requirement is 51,912 signatures.
The state’s brief lists precedents on its side, but none of those precedents involve presidential elections. The state says almost nothing about the state interest in requiring so many signatures for president, and instead mostly attacks the Green Party and the Constitution Parties and says they don’t have enough voter support to belong on the Georgia ballot for President. No presidential petition has succeeded in Georgia since Pat Buchanan did one in 2000, the year he was the Reform Party nominee.
Another round of briefs will be filed in January, and then the case will be ripe for a decision.
Proponents of nonpartisan elections for all California state office have drafted a proposed state constitutional initiative, and have asked the California Attorney General’s office to review the language and give the proposal a title. Here is the draft. The proponent is represented by Sutton Law Firm, which specializes in election law and has offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The initiative would revise the state constitution to remove party labels from ballots and sample ballots, for all the statewide executive offices and the legislature. It would retain party labels for President and Congress. Thanks to Jim Riley for the link.