Florida Republican Party Stiffens Ballot Access for Presidential Primary

Posted on by September 25, 2015
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On September 25, the Florida Republican Party passed some new barriers to entry onto the party’s presidential primary ballot. Either the candidates attend a fundraising event for the party in Orlando November 13-14; or they must pay the party $25,000; or they must submit 125 signatures of registered Republicans from each of the 27 U.S. House districts.

Florida election law says the sole control over who can get on the Republican presidential primary is exercised by the state party. In the past, the Republican Party always routinely put all Republican candidates on the primary ballot if they were discussed in the news media and considered bona fide candidates by the national party.

For instance, in 2012, these candidates were automatically put on the ballot: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Gary Johnson. Here is the portion of the Florida election law on presidential primary ballot access.

Apparently, if a candidate chooses the signature option, the party would have the burden of checking the validity of the signatures. There is no authorization in the Florida election law to have government employees check such petitions. One wonders if the Florida Republican Party has thought this through. See this story.

John Stossel TV Show Will Feature Austin Petersen’s Formal Declaration of Candidacy for Libertarian Party Presidential Nomination

Posted on by September 25, 2015
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On the evening of September 25, the John Stossel television show on Fox Business News will feature Austin Petersen and his formal declaration of candidacy for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for this news. Here is a link to Petersen’s campaign website. Petersen is editor-in-chief of The Libertarian Republic. He is now age 34 but will be age 35 in February 2016.

New York State Court Rules that Challenges to Women’s Equality Party Nominees Must be Made on a Case-by-Case Basis

Posted on by September 25, 2015
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On September 25, a New York State Court, Appellate Division, reversed the September 14 decision in the Women’s Equality Party lawsuit, DeLabio v Allen. The September 14 decision had invalidated all Women’s Equality Party nominations. The new decision says that the lower court decision is flawed. If court action is to be taken to remove a Women’s Equality Party nominee from the November 3, 2015 ballot, there must be a separate lawsuit for each challenged candidate.

This, of course, will burden the New York state courts, because already there are hundreds of Women’s Equality Party nominees on the ballot, and this ruling will cause a vast multiplication of lawsuits. Here is the new ruling.

The basis for the challenge to Women’s Equality Party nominees is that the party has no valid state officers, because the law requires a majority of a new party’s nominees to appoint interim officers for the party. In November 2014 the party had four statewide nominees but only two of them signed the paperwork appointing party officers. Two is not a majority.

U.S. District Court Requires Ohio Challenger to Reveal More Previously Hidden Evidence, in Libertarian Party Lawsuit

Posted on by September 25, 2015
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The U.S. District Court that is hearing Libertarian Party of Ohio v Husted has ruled that Terry Casey must produce redacted portions of some text messages he sent in the spring of 2014, when he and others involved with the Ohio Republican Party and the John Kasich gubernatorial campaign were engineering a challenge to keep the Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate off the ballot.

Terry Casey is a Republican activist who was active in finding someone to challenge the Libertarian gubernatorial primary petition, and finding money to pay the challenger’s legal bills. In the end, the Republican Party of Ohio paid $692,000 in legal bills for the challenger, Gregory Felsoci.

The magistrate judge has ordered some redacted passages from text messages to be shown to the magistrate judge on September 25. One of the text messages is dated February 27, 2004, when another Republican texted Casey, “Would it help our case if one of the (Libertarian) circulators signed a Democratic petition this year?” The response from Casey was, “YES!! These are very important. Can we discuss more by phone tonight?” The response to that was redacted, but now the redacted part must be revealed, at least to the Magistrate Judge.