On July 7, U.S. District Court judge Wilma Lewis, an Obama appointee, issued an opinion in Coffelt v Fawkes, civil-2014-025. The 41-page decision determines that in the U.S. Virgin Islands, registered party members are not permitted to be independent candidates.

Virgin Islands elects its Governor and its Lieutenant Governor on a joint ticket. Coffelt, a registered independent, filed a valid petition to be an independent candidate, but her Lieutenant Governor running mate, John Canegata, is a registered Republican. The Virgin Islands law does not actually say that an independent candidate must not be a registered member of a party. But the title of the section 342a of the law is “Prohibition against persons registered to a political party running as a no-party or independent candidate.”

The Supervisor of Elections interpreted the law to bar the ticket, and the judge ruled that the Supervisor’s interpretation is entitled to deference. The law would have permitted Canegata to change his registration from “Republican” to “independent” on the day he filed, but he apparently does not want to do that, because he is the chair of the Republican Party in the Virgin Islands and he is running for re-election as party chair in the party’s August primary. Thanks to Derek Muller for the link. Coffelt and Canegata have asked the Third Circuit to reverse the decision; see this story.

The Republican Party has no gubernatorial candidate this year. The only ballot-qualified party, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, is the Independent Citizens Movement. It has a territorial legislator but it has no gubernatorial candidate this year either. There are some independent candidates for Governor/Lt. Governor this year besides the Coffelt-Canegata team. The independent petition deadline is October 5, 2014.

Jeremy Alford, who writes the blog Louisiana Politics, here makes the case that Congressman Vance McAllister ought to leave the Republican Party and become an independent, and run for re-election that way. The reason is that, according to Alford, the Republican Party has open disdain for McAllister. Thanks to Randall Hayes for the link.

This year, all three statewide minor party petitions were challenged in Illinois. The “record check” to examine each challenged signature starts on Monday, July 14, for the Libertarian petition and the Constitution petition. The process involves a representative of the challenger, and a representative of the petitioning group, sitting down together with an employee of the State Board of Elections, over a computer. The trio focuses on one signature at a time. For a statewide minor party petition, which can involve looking at 20,000 to 30,000 signatures, the process generally takes at least a week. Petitioning groups are told to have twelve workers on the scene.

This year, the process starts in the Springfield office of the Board for the Libertarians; and the Chicago office for the Constitution Party. Because the Board only has those two offices, the Green Party process can’t start this week, but will only commence when one of the others is finished.