The Sunday, May 18 New York Times has this account of the Libertarian Party’s history 1976-1980 and its interaction with David Koch and some of his brothers. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
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Washington state candidate filing for the August 5 primary has closed. Here is the list. The state has no statewide offices up this year. For the ten U.S. House races, there are 49 candidates: 23 Republicans, 13 Democrats, one Green, and 12 independents. Some of the independents chose “independent” as a ballot label; some chose “no party preference”; one chose “Work and Wealth”; one chose “National Union”; one chose “Human Rights”; one chose “Citizens.”
Each U.S. House district has at least one candidate from each of the two major parties. Consequently, it is overwhelmingly likely that the November ballot for U.S. House will list only Republicans and Democrats. Ever since 2008, when Washington state started using top-two, the only time someone who wasn’t a major party nominee appeared on the November ballot for Congress or statewide office was once in 2010, when an independent qualified for US House, 7th district, in a race in which no Republican had run.
On May 16, former Arizona state legislator Tom O’Halleran said he will run for the State Senate as an independent candidate. See this story. He changed his registration from “Republican” to “independent” on May 14. The petition deadline this year for independent candidates in Arizona is May 28. O’Halleran served in the legislature for eight years as a Republican.
Arizona is one of only a handful of states in which no one has ever been elected to the state legislature except Republican and Democratic nominees. Of course, one reason for that is that Arizona has only been a state since 1912. It is unknown if any minor party or independent candidates were ever elected to the Arizona territorial legislature.
A U.S. District Court in Michigan will hear Moore v Johnson on Wednesday, May 21, at 9:30 a.m. This is one of the cases that challenges Michigan’s law requiring candidate petitions to be circulated only by registered voters. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
On May 16, U.S. District Court Judge Neil V. Wake upheld Arizona’s February petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties. See the 12 page opinion here in Arizona Green Party v Bennett, cv-14-375. The decision says that Arizona needs a petition deadline that early, in order to get ready for the new party’s primary, which is six months after the deadline, on August 26, 2014.
The decision mentions some of the precedents that invalidated early petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties in other states, but does not discuss them, except to imply that they all involve presidential elections. However, some of the precedents mentioned in the decision were not related to presidential elections or presidential candidates.
The decision makes a slight acknowledgement that the state is free to let newly-qualifying parties nominate by convention. The decision does not acknowledge the point that initiative petitions are due in Arizona only four months before the election, and somehow the state is able to cope with the initiative deadline. The party has already filed a notice of appeal.