Cal Newsroom has this story about the American Independent Party, which features the fact that (1) no member of the party is running for any partisan office this year in California; (2) the party has endorsed many statewide Republican candidates and these endorsements appear in the statewide voter pamphlet this year.

The story is flawed because is says that the American Independent Party claims to be the fastest-growing party in California. This sentence is false and the AIP does not make that claim, nor could it, because for the last 16 months, the fastest growing parties in California have been the Peace & Freedom Party and the Libertarian Party.

On May 10, former Wisconsin Governor Patrick J. Lucey died at the age of 96. See this New York Times obituary. He was John B. Anderson’s vice-presidential running mate in 1980, when the independent ticket got on the ballot in all 50 states and polled 6.61% of the vote.

Anderson set out on his independent candidacy on April 24, 1980, but could not find a suitable vice-presidential candidate until August 27, 1980. The vast majority of states put Lucey on the November ballot, even though Anderson’s ballot access petitions had circulated with stand-ins. The Anderson-Lucey ticket won lawsuits against Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Florida, to force state election officials to print Lucey’s name on the ballot instead of the stand-ins. Thanks to J. David Gillespie for the link.

U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin A. Drain, an Obama appointee, will hear Davis v Johnson on Thursday, May 15, at 10 a.m. This is the case in which Robert Davis, a candidate for re-election to the Highland Park School Board, hopes to invalidate the Michigan law that requires circulators for candidate petitions to be registered voters. The School Board election is non-partisan.

The request for the hearing makes reference to Congressman John Conyers. The brief says, “Plaintiff Davis believes the Court should be aware that the question of whether Congressman John Conyers will have sufficient signatures to qualify to have his name placed on the August primary election ballot will be impacted similarly by this Court’s decision on Plaintiff Davis’ motion.”

The state’s brief is due Tuesday, May 13. It is possible the state will argue that, even if the state loses the Davis case, that has no impact on Conyers. The state might argue that there is a difference between non-partisan candidates such as Davis, and candidates running in a partisan primary such as Conyers. However, if the state does make that argument, it would seem to be a weak argument. Michigan does not have registration by party. If Michigan did have registration by party, the state could argue that only party members should be allowed to circulate candidate petitions and the only way to know if the circulator is a party member, is to require that the circulator be registered. But, without registration by party, that argument can’t be made.