On April 11, filing for the Oklahoma primaries closed. That was also the deadline for independent candidates to file, even though independent candidates don’t run in the primary and go straight to the November ballot. Here is a link to the candidate list.

For the first time since 1998, a minor party candidate for Governor will appear on the November ballot. He is Richard Prawdzienski, an activist in the Libertarian Party. He is the first member of the Libertarian Party to run for Governor of Oklahoma. However, his ballot label will be “independent”, because the Libertarian Party is not on the ballot and has not been since 2000. 2014 will be the seventh election in a row in which no minor parties have appeared on the Oklahoma ballot. There is no other state that has gone seven elections in a row with no minor parties on the ballot for any office, since that was also true for Tennessee in the years 1974-1998.

In the five U.S. House races, there are two in which only Republicans filed. There are five statewide partisan offices in which only Republicans filed: Auditor, Attorney General, Treasurer, Insurance Commissioner, and Corporation Commissioner. Oklahoma does not permit write-in votes, so these offices will simply not be printed on the November 2014 ballot, since it would be impossible for anyone to vote against the Republican nominee in any event. Oklahoma disguises this lack of competition by simply removing one-candidate elections from the ballot.

On April 7, the Tennessee legislature passed SB 1466. It makes two small ballot access improvements. For a newly-qualifying party that just wants to be on the ballot in a single county, the petition is lowered from 5% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 2.5%. The vote test for a county party to remain ballot-qualified falls from 20% to 5%.

Also, the bill says that when Tennessee holds a special election, a previously unqualified party can get on the ballot for that special election if it submits a petition of 2.5% of the last gubernatorial election within that district. Previously, there was no procedure for an unqualified party to get on the ballot in a special election. The procedure established by SB 1466 is wildly impractical. If Tennessee were to hold a special congressional election, the new formula would require approximately 4,500 valid signatures in the typical district, and the petitioning period would probably be only a few weeks.

On April 10, bills were introduced in both houses of Congress, to permit ex-felons to vote in federal elections. The Senate bill is S2235 and the main sponsor is Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland). The House bill doesn’t have a bill number yet, and is introduced by Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan). Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.