On August 11, the Mississippi Secretary of State informed the American Freedom Party that it is now a ballot-qualified party. The American Freedom Party was formerly known as American Third Position. It ran Merlin Miller for president in 2012. Miller was not on the ballot in Mississippi in 2012.
Miller himself left the American Freedom Party last year. The 2016 presidential nominee of the American Freedom Party is Bob Whitaker.
On the evening of August 11, Ari Melber, standing in for hostess Rachel Maddow, aired a segment on Donald Trump and sore loser laws. I was a guest for about four minutes, and my segment can be seen here. Before I came on the show, Melber had quoted from an Ohio law that says independent candidates associated with a political party may not get on the general election ballot.
This is old news, but it has just come to my attention. In 2000 Ralph Nader won a federal lawsuit against South Dakota’s June petition deadline for independent presidential candidates. Nader v Hazeltine, 110 F Supp 2d 1201. The court said June is too early for presidential independents. The state did not appeal, and in 2001 passed Senate Bill 7, moving the deadline for presidential independents from June to the first Tuesday in August.
However, in 2012, the legislature passed HB 1182. The intent of that bill was to move the non-presidential independent deadline from June to April. However, HB 1182 apparently accidentally repealed the sentence at the end of section 12-7-1 that had set an August deadline for presidential independents. There is no longer any separate law governing independent presidential petition deadlines. Technically, the law now says the independent presidential deadline is in April. But since even June was too early, it is obvious that April is also unconstitutional. It is not known what position the Secretary of State will take. Already South Dakota is being sued for having a too-early petition deadline for new parties.
Earlier this year, independent candidate Paul Panepinto submitted a petition to be on the November 3, 2015 ballot for Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice, a statewide partisan office. August 11 was the deadline for anyone to challenge his petition, but no one did so, so he is on the ballot. He is the first candidate to run outside the two major parties for that office since 1993.
Chances are, since he is a former Republican local judge, the Republican Party would have challenged his petition if it had not been for last month’s court decision invalidating Pennsylvania’s challenge system.
On August 7, several amici curiae briefs were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Evenwel v Abbott, 14-940. The issue is whether the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. House and state legislative districts to based on equal numbers of eligible voters, or population. One of the amici is from sixteen Tennessee state legislators. They argue that the Court should choose eligible voters. Here is the amicus.
