Gallup Polls has been asking the U.S. public starting in 2003 whether they believe the U.S. needs a new major political party. On September 25, new results were released. See this Gallup press release. The percentage of respondents replying “yes” is up to 60%. That is the highest ever, except once before it was at 60%.
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.
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.
On September 24, Canada held a five-party debate. See this story. For additional information about the Green Party’s leader’s performance, see this story.
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.
