November 20 was the deadline for presidential candidates to file in New Hampshire. Thirty Republicans filed, and twenty-eight Democrats filed. By contrast, in 2012, 31 Republicans filed and 14 Democrats filed. Candidates need no petition; they merely pay a fee of $1,000.

The New Hampshire Secretary of State encourages many candidates to file, because the more candidates file, the more revenue the state receives. Gardner even sometimes telephones lesser-known presidential candidates and encourages them to file.

Yet when the Libertarian Party sued New Hampshire over ballot access, the state claimed that the restrictive rules were needed to keep the ballot from being “cluttered.” In 2014, New Hampshire was one of five states with no minor party or independent candidates for any statewide office. The others were Alabama, California, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania (and Washington had no statewide offices up).

Here is a link to the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s page. Under “election information” click on “candidates filed.”

On November 20, Georgia Greens are holding two rallies against Georgia ballot access laws that relate to minor party and independent candidates. See this story.

On November 19, the Ohio Libertarian Party filed a notice of appeal to the Sixth Circuit, in Libertarian Party of Ohio v Husted, 14-3230. The issue in this part of the case is whether Ohio waived its Eleventh Amendment immunity. If Ohio did waive its Eleventh Amendment immunity, then the federal courts have a right to determine if the 2013 ballot access laws for new political parties violates the Ohio Constitution. The U.S. District Court had ruled that federal courts can’t decide whether the 2013 law violates the Ohio Constitution.

The 2013 law appears to violate the Ohio Constitution, because the 2013 law says new parties can’t nominate by primary, yet the State Constitution seems to say all parties must nominate by primary. The 2013 law sets a July petition deadline for new parties, and the Ohio primary is already over by then. The Ohio primary is in March in presidential years and May in other years.

In the meantime, the party is still waiting for the U.S. District Court to rule on whether the enforcement of another law in 2014 represented selective enforcement. That law required petitioners to fill in a blank to say who paid them to gather signatures. The law had never before been enforced. It was also ambiguous, because it wasn’t clear to the circulators that it applied to independent contractors.