See this Los Angeles Times story about Gary Johnson’s lawsuit, alleging that the Commission on Presidential Debates violates anti-trust law. That lawsuit is filed in U.S. District Court in southern California. UPDATE: also, see this PolicyMic article, which gives details of the activism being undertaken to change the Commission on Presidential Debates’ rule.
On September 26, the Sixth Circuit refused to rehear Jolivette v Husted, although the vote was not unanimous. This is the case over whether an independent candidate for the legislature, who had enough valid signatures, should be kept off the ballot on the grounds that he had too close an association with the Republican Party. The Ohio law only bans “sore losers”, not candidates who merely associated with a party. But the tradition has taken hold in Ohio that the “sore loser” law should be interpreted to ban more behavior than the behavior mentioned specifically by the law.
Greg Jolivette circulated a petition last year to be on the Republican primary ballot, but he withdrew it and never ran in the Republican primary. Nevertheless, that action has now been judged to be the same action as actually running in a primary and losing that primary. The case is Jolivette v Husted, 12-3998.
The September 28 State Journal-Register of Springfield, Illinois, has this op-ed, criticizing Illinois ballot access laws. The op-ed is by Robert Gray, who was named the city’s citizen of the year a while ago, and who is President of the Citizens Club of Springfield. His op-ed describes the dirty tricks used against him when he tried to run as an independent.
Illinois requires a higher percentage of signatures for state legislative offices than any states other than Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Kansas. For U.S. House, Illinois is third highest, behind only Georgia and North Carolina.
On September 27, Georgia representative Rick Crawford (D-Cedartown) announced that he has switched to being a Republican. A few hours later, the Georgia Democratic Party state committee, which happened to be meeting anyway, voted to ask the Secretary of State to remove his name from the ballot. Courts in Alabama and Tennessee have permitted political parties to override the primaries, but apparently this idea has not yet been tested in Georgia.
The ballot already contains a Republican nominee, Trey Kelley. See this story. Thanks to Kyle Bennett for the link.
On September 27, poll results for the U.S. Senate race in Indiana were released. The results of the Howey/DePauw Poll are Democrat Joe Donnelly 40%, Republican Richard Mourdock 38%, Libertarian Andrew Horning 7%, undecided 15%. Those are the only three candidates that will be listed on the ballot. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
