This Examiner story says that Michigan does not permit candidates in major party presidential primaries to later appear on the ballot as independent candidates. The story says that this will injure Donald Trump if he decides to run outside the major parties.
The story is inaccurate. Michigan’s sore loser law, sec. 168.695, makes no mention of independent candidates. It only says that when an individual has run in the primary of one party, he or she can’t be the general election nominee of another party. When Gary Johnson was kept off the ballot in 2012 as a Libertarian because his name had been on the Republican presidential primary ballot, the state insisted throughout the litigation that Johnson was free to use the independent presidential petition, which requires 30,000 signatures.
When Michigan passed its sore loser law in 1955, Michigan didn’t have procedures for independent candidates for any office. Therefore, the sore loser law naturally did not pertain to independent candidates, because the whole concept back then didn’t exist in Michigan. When Michigan finally put in statutory procedures for independent candidates in 1988, the sore loser law was not altered, so it doesn’t apply to independent candidates.
The story is also inaccurate when it says that when the Libertarians in 2012 weren’t permitted to list former Governor Gary Johnson as its nominee, the Libertarian Party of Michigan then tried to nominate another individual named Gary Johnson, and the state denied that also. The state did not deny the other Gary Johnson. The state simply didn’t respond to the party’s request.
