On August 28, the Hawaii Supreme Court refused to hear Lathers v Abercrombie, scot-14-1069. This was a lawsuit filed by some Hawaii voters who were unable to vote in the August 9 primary because of flooding in their neighborhood. Here is the two-page order dismissing the case.
On August 26, the Third Circuit issued this 16-page opinion in Coffelt v Fawkes, 14-3280. In this case, the Third Circuit had issued an order on August 1 putting an independent ticket on the Virgin Islands ballot, but had not explained its reasoning. The opinion of August 26 does explain the reason for the order.
The independent ticket for Governor and Lieutenant Governor had been kept off the November ballot by Virgin Islands election officials, and by the U.S. District Court, because the Lieutenant Governor is a registered Republican. The Third Circuit said nothing in the Virgin Islands election law says that a candidate who uses the independent candidate procedure must not be a registered party member. The opinion is interesting because the Virgin Islands election code was largely copied from the Pennsylvania election code. However, the Pennsylvania election code says explicitly that a petitioning candidate must have ceased being affiliated with a qualified party at least 30 days before that year’s primary, and the Virgin Islands code doesn’t have that provision.
The Libertarian Party’s national web page has this list of 2014 Libertarian Party nominees. The list will undergo further changes. The candidates are arranged in alphabetical order of states.
On August 26, the Arizona Green Party filed this opening brief in Arizona Green Party v Bennett, 14-15976 in the Ninth Circuit. The issue is the state’s February petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties. The U.S. District Court had upheld the deadline.
On August 28, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Piersol upheld a South Dakota law that tells parties they cannot nominate a non-member. He ruled from the bench at the conclusion of the oral argument. Libertarian Party of South Dakota v Gant, 14-cv-4132. The judge said it is not a severe burden on a party to be told that it can’t nominate a non-member.
The judge relied partly on Storer v Brown, which upheld a California law saying no one could be an independent candidate if he or she had been a member of a party within the preceding year. But Freedom of Association has no bearing on that issue, and later opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court had emphasized that parties have constitutional protection to nominate whom they wish. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court said in California Democratic Party v Jones, “Our cases vigorously affirm the special place the First Amendment reserves for, and the special protection it accords, the process by which a political party ‘selects a standard bearer who best represents the party’s ideologies and preferences. The moment of choosing the party’s nominee, we have said, is ‘the crucial juncture at which the appeal to common principles may be translated into concerted action…the ability of the members of the Republican Party to select their own candidate…unquestionably implicates an associational freedom…the rights of a recognized political party unquestionably have a constitutional right to select their nominees for public office.”
The U.S. Supreme Court reiterated this in 2008 in New York State Board of Elections v Lopez Torres, when it said, “A political party has a First Amendment right to choose a candidate-selection process that will in its view produce the nominee who best represents its political platform.” In 1840 the Whig Party chose a Democrat for Vice-President, and in 1864 the Republican Party chose a Democrat for Vice-President. It is believed that when Dwight Eisenhower was nominated for president in June 1952, he was a registered independent. In 2008 John McCain seriously considered asking U.S. Senator Joesph Lieberman, a registered Democrat, to be the Republican nominee for vice-president. It is not known if the South Dakota Libertarian Party will appeal.
