Although the Georgia Libertarian Party is ballot-qualified for statewide office, it is not ballot-qualified for district office. This year, the only Libertarian who tried to get on the ballot for a district office, Jeff Amason, managed to collect the signatures of 5% of the registered voters in his State House district. However, his petition has still been rejected, because his wife notarized almost all the petition sheets, and, unfortunately, she also circulated some of the sheets.

Georgia is the only state that requires each petition sheet to be notarized, and also says that a notary who circulated even one sheet is then unable to do any notarization work whatsoever for the petition. Amason’s wife did not, of course, notarize her own sheets, but that is irrelevant to Georgia. See this story.

On July 24, Gravis released a new poll for the Montana U.S. Senate race. The results: Republican Steve Daines 45%, Democratic incumbent John Walsh 38%, Libertarian Roger Roots 9%, undecided 8%.

Just a week ago, another poll had Roots at 6%. Both he and Daines have improved since last week’s poll, probably because of the news that Senator Walsh plagerized the works of other authors in 2007. Thanks to Michael for the link.

The Constitution Party and the Libertarian Party are both qualified parties in South Dakota, but neither one of them has been able to run any candidates for Governor, U.S. Senator, or U.S. House this year, because they must nominate by primary for those offices, and the petition for a candidate to get on the primary ballot for those offices requires 250 signatures of party members. Given the small number of registered voters in those parties, that is too difficult. The 250-signature petition has not been overcome by any qualified minor party in 2008, 2010, 2012, or this year.

On July 23, Charles W. Haan, the Constitution Party’s candidate for U.S. House, filed a pro se lawsuit, asking that he be placed on the November ballot even though he wasn’t technically nominated in the June primary. Haan points out that the party officers certified him as their nominee. He also points out that he did submit a primary petition signed by 205 registered party members.

The Constitution Party filed a similar lawsuit in 2010, but then the plaintiff-candidate withdrew, so the U.S. District Court ruled none of the other plaintiffs had standing. The Court also said that even if some of the plaintiffs did have standing, the requirement is constitutional. The plaintiffs then appealed, and the Eighth Circuit said the U.S. District Court should not have made a ruling on the merits, given that no one had standing.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Storer v Brown, 415 US 724 (1974) that the way to evaluate petition requirements is to divide the number of signatures required by the number of eligible signers. Because the Constitution Party has fewer than 600 registered members, and they are the only eligible signers, the calculation works out to 40%, which should be unconstitutional, if the U.S. District Court will follow the Storer rule. The case is Haan v Gant, 14-3009.