August 1 is the Pennsylvania deadline for petitions for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties. The Green Party did not obtain the needed 16,639 signatures, according to this story. The party only has 14,000 signatures on hand.

Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Alabama, California, and New Mexico will be the five states this year with a complete Democratic-Republican ballot monopoly for all statewide offices. Although the New Hampshire deadline is not until August 6, the Libertarian petition for U.S. Senate in that state will not succeed.

This is the third midterm year in a row in which Pennsylvania voters will not have anyone to vote for, for statewide office, except the Democratic and Republican nominees. The only other states for which this is true are New Mexico and Alabama.

On July 29, Florida State Representative Reggie Fullwood (D-Jacksonville) filed a lawsuit in state court to regain his spot on the Democratic primary ballot. He was kept off the ballot because his Notary Public forgot to check a box on his campaign finance disclosure form. See this story.

Because he is the only candidate who filed, in any party, if he is kept off the ballot, the voters won’t be able to fill the seat in November, and they will go unrepresented until February 2015, when a special election would be held. Florida allows write-in candidates in general elections, but the deadline to file as a declared write-in candidate is so early, it is already too late for Fullwood or anyone else to file as a write-in. The proposed special election will cost the taxpayers over $200,000. Fullwood argues that the error is “de minimis”, not important enough to affect ballot placement.