On August 11, Tom J. Ervin of Greenville, South Carolina, announced that he will try to get on the ballot as an independent candidate for Governor of South Carolina. He was elected as a Democratic state legislator in 1978 and re-elected in 1980. He also served as a state court judge for 14 years. He ran in the Republican primary for a seat in the state house in 2005, but was defeated in the Republican primary. See this story. He had been planning to run in this year’s Republican primary for Governor, but has withdrawn from the primary.

If he gets on the November ballot, he will be the first independent candidate for Governor to be on a government-printed ballot in South Carolina history. The other states in which no independent has ever been on a government-printed ballot for Governor are Delaware, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, and North Carolina.

Ervin needs 10,000 signatures by July 15. The Libertarian Party and the United Citizens Party are also running candidates in the race.

On April 11, both sides filed opening briefs in U.S. District Court in Arizona Green Party v Bennett, 2:14cv-375. The issue is whether the February 28 petition deadline is too early. The law says the petition is due 180 days before the primary, and that all parties, even newly-qualifying parties, must nominate by primary. Arizona primaries this year are August 26. The state says it needs six months lead time to get ready for the new party’s primary.

Before 1999, the Arizona petition deadline for a new party was 112 days before the primary. Initiative petitions are due in Arizona in the first week in July, only four months before the general election. This suggests that if the state can cope with initiative petitions only four months before the appropriate election, it ought to be able to handle petitions to qualify a new party four months before the appropriate election.

The Green Party’s brief cites many cases that early petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties are unconstitutional, but the state’s brief does not discuss any precedents on that issue. Also, the state says that the Green Party appeared on the ballot in 2002 and 2004, but in truth the party did not qualify in Arizona either of those years.

On April 8, the Tennessee legislature passed HB 2410, which says, “Any representative of the United Nations appearing without a treaty ratified by the United States senate, shall not monitor elections in this state. This act shall take effect upon becoming a law, the public welfare requiring it.”