All the briefs will have been filed by February 7, 2025, in the lawsuit Jim Walden v Kosinski, e.d., 1:25cv-72. This is the case filed by an independent candidate for Mayor of New York city, who wants to use the ballot label “Independence”. Starting in 2022, New York bans that word as part of any party’s name.
The New Alliance Party was founded in New York in 1979 by Fred Newman, and it has undergone many transformations during its lifetime. As a minor party, it made history when it placed its presidential nominee, Lenora Fulani, on the ballot in all 51 jurisdictions in 1988. It also got her on the ballot in 40 jurisdictions in 1992.
In 1994, the party dissolved itself and reformed as the Patriot Party, together with some Ross Perot supporters. Then, in 1995, when Ross Perot created the Reform Party, the Patriot Party dissolved itself and went into the Reform Party. But the core of the original New Alliance organization kept a somewhat separate existence, and became a pressure group called the Committee for a Unified Independent Party. Many years later, it morphed into Independent Voting, which held itself out as the defender of independent voters.
Now, Independent Voting, a non-profit organization, is dissolving itself. Jackie Salit, who led the organization after Fred Newman, continues work at the Arizona State University Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy.
Leaders of the New Alliance Party were responsible for persuading Congressman John Conyers to introduce a bill in Congress to outlaw restrictive state ballot access laws in federal elections. The bill was also introduced in 1987 and 1989 by Conyers, and then later it was introduced in two sessions of Congress by Congressman Tim Penny. After that, it was introduced in four more sessions of Congress by Ron Paul. In 1998 it received a vote on the House floor and received 67 “Aye” votes. It is possible a similar bill will be introduced this year.
On January 8, three Indiana representatives introduced HB 1029, which would change Indiana primaries from open to closed. Indiana has always been an open primary state and has never had registration by party. Here is the bill.
The bill is flawed because the authors made no provision for a primary party to tell the state that it wants independents to be able to vote in its primaries. The U.S. Supreme Court decision Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut requires that parties with primaries be given this option.
The bill says that the voter registration form would in the future enclose a blank line for a voter to register into a party. The form would not list any parties. The bill does not say if the state must keep a tally of voters who register into an unqualified party, which courts in Colorado, Iowa, Oklahoma, New York, and New Jersey have required. The bill does not even say if qualified parties that nominate by convention are entitled to a tally of their registrants.
The authors are Representatives Michelle Davis of Whiteland, J.D. Prescott of Union City, and Elizabeth Rowray of Yorktown. Two of the authors are Assistant Majority Floor Leaders.
On January 6, the self-described watchdog group Accountable.US asked the New York State Board of Elections to investigate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for voting on November 5 (by postal mail) from the address 84 Croton Lake Rd., Katonah. That is in Westchester County. Kennedy has been voting at that address for decades. But the state courts removed him fro the New York ballot last year because they believed that was not his domicile. See this press release from Accountable.US.
The Minnesota legislature has two vacancies, and the state plans to fill them this month. But there are several lawsuits challenging aspects of the upcoming elections. Republicans argue that the date of the elections were improperly chosen. Various minor parties and independents may sue over the schedule that requires all 500 signatures be collected in one day. And now a residency challenge has been filed to one of the Democratic candidates. See this story.
