The Federal Election Commission has received forms from 835 individuals who claim they are running for President. The number was 586 before Public Policy Polling included Deez Nuts in some of its polls. That got so much publicity, it stimulated hundreds more entries, virtually all of them obviously jokes. See this story. Thanks to the Center for Competitive Politics for the link. The number grows every day.
On August 25, U.S. District Court Judge James M. Moody, Jr., upheld the March 3 petition deadline that was in effect in Arkansas in 2014 (and will be again in 2018, under current law), for non-presidential independent candidate petitions. He said the deadline is needed to give the state time to check the petitions. Of course, independent candidates go directly onto the November ballot, which is not printed until September. The decision is Moore v Martin, 4:14cv-65, eastern district. In 2014, the primary was in late May, which meant that independent candidates had to qualify more than two months before the major parties chose their nominees.
The decision says early deadlines are not unconstitutional unless they are combined with a high number of signatures. One of the plaintiffs in this case needed 10,000 signatures; the others, who were running for the legislature, needed a petition of 3% of the last gubernatorial vote cast in their districts.
This legal conclusion is obviously wrong. In Anderson v Celebrezze, the U.S. Supreme Court said Ohio’s March 20 petition deadline for independent presidential candidates was unconstitutional all by itself, regardless of the number of signatures. Anderson only needed 5,000 signatures in Ohio in 1980, which was only eight-hundredths of 1% of the number of registered voters in Ohio at the time (Ohio had 5,926,864 registered voters in 1980). Plaintiffs will probably ask for reconsideration, mentioning Anderson v Celebrezze. The opinion does not discuss that case.
According to this story, a few months ago the South Carolina Republican Party revised its declaration of candidacy form to require candidates in its presidential primary to promise they will support the party’s nominee in November, no matter who it turns out to be.
In 2012, when there was no such pledge in South Carolina’s Republican Party, Gary Johnson ran in the South Carolina Republican primary but he abandoned that campaign and was on the November 2012 South Carolina ballot as the Libertarian nominee.
This Canadian poll, released August 25, shows an almost perfect 3-way tie among the Conservative, Liberal, and New Democratic Parties, with the Greens slightly above 5%. The election is October 19, 2015.
Colorado isn’t holding a presidential primary in 2016. The Republican Party will start the process of electing delegates to the national convention in local caucuses in the spring of 2016, but the process of electing delegates will not have any matching caucus presidential voting. Of course various individuals chosen for the national convention will have their own preferences, but all delegates will be completely free to vote for anyone they wish at the July convention itself. See this Denver Post story.
