According to this story, Paul Johnson, former Mayor of Phoenix, will attempt to qualify an initiative in 2016 to convert all Arizona elections, except presidential elections, to non-partisan elections. There will be no party labels on any ballot, except for President, under the proposal.
Although the Georgia Libertarian Party is ballot-qualified for statewide office, it is not ballot-qualified for district office. This year, the only Libertarian who tried to get on the ballot for a district office, Jeff Amason, managed to collect the signatures of 5% of the registered voters in his State House district. However, his petition has still been rejected, because his wife notarized almost all the petition sheets, and, unfortunately, she also circulated some of the sheets.
Georgia is the only state that requires each petition sheet to be notarized, and also says that a notary who circulated even one sheet is then unable to do any notarization work whatsoever for the petition. Amason’s wife did not, of course, notarize her own sheets, but that is irrelevant to Georgia. See this story.
On July 25, James T. Parker, independent candidate for New Mexico Education Commission (a partisan office elected by districts), filed this brief in his ballot access case, Parker v Duran. The lawsuit challenges the 3% petition for independent candidates, and seeks injunctive relief to put him on the November ballot. A decision is expected quickly.
On July 24, Gravis released a new poll for the Montana U.S. Senate race. The results: Republican Steve Daines 45%, Democratic incumbent John Walsh 38%, Libertarian Roger Roots 9%, undecided 8%.
Just a week ago, another poll had Roots at 6%. Both he and Daines have improved since last week’s poll, probably because of the news that Senator Walsh plagerized the works of other authors in 2007. Thanks to Michael for the link.
On July 26, the New York Times carried three letters to the editor, disagreeing with the July 22 op-ed by U.S. Senator Charles Schumer that advocates top-two primaries. Only one of the three letters mentions that a top-two system keeps minor party and independent candidates out of the general election campaign. Also, none of the letters mentioned Schumer’s factual error. Schumer said independents can’t vote in primaries in most states, but that is not true.
