On September 25, Cornel West filed a federal ballot access lawsuit in Pennsylvania. It argues that the election code does not really require petitioning candidates for presidential elector to file Candidate Affidavits. It also says that if the code does require that, Equal Protection is violated, because the ballot-qualified parties need not submit any affidavits for their nominees for presidential elector.

West v Pennsylvania Department of State, w.d., 2:24cv-1349, was argued on October 7 before U.S. District Court Judge J. Nicholas Rangan, a Trump appointee. Usually ballot access cases for statewide office are not filed in the western district. However, some of the plaintiffs live in that district. They are voters who signed the West petition.

Delaware law defines a qualified party as a group that has registration membership of one-tenth of 1% of the state total. The Green Party lost its qualified status in 2022 because its registration dipped. But during September 2024, it increased its registration so that it now has enough members to again meet the requirement.

However, the increased registration was not obtained in time for the party to be on for the 2024 election, the first time the party hasn’t been on the ballot for President in Delaware since 1996. Assuming it keeps the 776 registrants it has now, it will be on in 2026.

New Hampshire is one of only five states that still has a party column ballot. Of those, it is the only one that rotates the columns so that every column has an equal chance to appear in the most prominent position, the left-hand side of the ballot.

The other party-column states put the two major parties in the most prominent position. Those states are Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware.

This year the New Hampshire lottery for ballot position put the “other” column in the most prominent position.

One can easily criticize New Hampshire for not giving each party its own column. Instead, only the two largest parties gets their own column, and all others are placed in the “other” column. This misleads voters into thinking there is some sort of association between the various minor parties in that column. See this November 2024 ballot. To see any ballot, just choose any town at random. They all look alike. Thanks to Tony Roza for the link.