On August 15, Insider Advantage Polls for the Georgia gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races were released. See this story.

The gubernatorial results: incumbent Republican Nathan Deal 43%, Democrat Jason Carter 39%, Libertarian Andrew Hunt 7%, undecided 11%.

The U.S. Senate results: Republican David Perdue 47%, Democrat Michelle Nunn 40%, Libertarian Amanda Swafford 8%, undecided 5%.

Georgia provides for a run-off in December if no one gets 50% in November.

No candidate who was not the nominee of the Democratic or Republican Parties has polled as much as 5% for Governor of Georgia since 1908, when an independent polled 9.5% in a two-race with no Republican. No candidate who was not the nominee of the Democratic or Republican Parties has polled as much as 5% for U.S. Senate in Georgia since 1920, when an independent polled 5.1% in a two-person race with no Republican. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.

On August 24, two U.S. House candidates of the Illinois Green Party filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, in the Southern District, against the notarization requirement for each petition sheet, and the 5% petition requirement in combination with the 90-day limit for collecting those signatures. A typical U.S. House district in Illinois requires the nominee of an unqualified party to submit 14,000 valid signatures. The case also says that the requirement is particularly harsh in districts without a major population center, or districts in which the largest population center is bisected between two districts.

The case is Tripp v Smart, 14-cv-890. It is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Michael Reagan, a Clinton appointee.

On August 13, at the end of oral argument, U.S. District Court Judge John Tharp said he will issue a ruling on injunctive relief in Summers v Smart on Thursday, August 21, at 9:30 a.m. This is the Illinois Green Party ballot access lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the challenge process to the Illinois Libertarian statewide petition is completely over, but election officials say they won’t issue a decision as to whether the Libertarian slate should be on the ballot until August 22. It is not known if the delay in the Libertarian decision is related to the timing of events in the Green Party case or not. Although the Libertarian Party showed in the binder check process that approximately 33,000 signatures are valid (25,000 are required), the challengers are now trying to invalidate all the work of certain Libertarian circulators.