On April 11, a Massachusetts state court heard arguments in the case over whether Mark Fisher really received enough votes at the Republican Party state convention to qualify to petition for the primary ballot. See this story. Massachusetts election law says any qualified party member may petition for a place on a party primary ballot. But Republican Party rules, as well as Democratic Party rules, say no one may petition unless the individual received at least 15% of the vote at the state convention. Fisher received over 15% at the Republican convention last month if one doesn’t count blank votes, but he only received 14.765% if blanks votes are included. The Republican Party takes the position that Fisher did not qualify.

A decision is likely during the coming week, according to the news story. Even if Fisher wins the lawsuit, he will then still need 10,000 signatures of registered independents and registered Republicans in order to get on the September 9 primary ballot.

On April 12, the Texas Libertarian Party held its state convention in Temple, Texas, to choose nominees for the 2014 election, and to elect party officers. The convention had approximately 215 voting delegates. The greatest suspense was over the gubernatorial nomination. Kathie Glass, who was also the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2010, won with 107 votes in the final ballot, defeating Robert Bell. Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for this news.

On April 11, filing for the Oklahoma primaries closed. That was also the deadline for independent candidates to file, even though independent candidates don’t run in the primary and go straight to the November ballot. Here is a link to the candidate list.

For the first time since 1998, a minor party candidate for Governor will appear on the November ballot. He is Richard Prawdzienski, an activist in the Libertarian Party. He is the first member of the Libertarian Party to run for Governor of Oklahoma. However, his ballot label will be “independent”, because the Libertarian Party is not on the ballot and has not been since 2000. 2014 will be the seventh election in a row in which no minor parties have appeared on the Oklahoma ballot. There is no other state that has gone seven elections in a row with no minor parties on the ballot for any office, since that was also true for Tennessee in the years 1974-1998.

In the five U.S. House races, there are two in which only Republicans filed. There are five statewide partisan offices in which only Republicans filed: Auditor, Attorney General, Treasurer, Insurance Commissioner, and Corporation Commissioner. Oklahoma does not permit write-in votes, so these offices will simply not be printed on the November 2014 ballot, since it would be impossible for anyone to vote against the Republican nominee in any event. Oklahoma disguises this lack of competition by simply removing one-candidate elections from the ballot.