Third Party Watch says that the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., New York petition has 100,000 signatures. See here. The requirement is 45,000.
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On May 8, No Labels asked the Wisconsin Election Commission to withdraw its petition for party status, even though the staff has already determined that the petition has enough valid signatures. It is not clear what the state will do; there is a meeting on May 14. See this story.
On May 8, the Ohio legislature made no headway with any bill to ease the deadline for qualified parties to certify the names of their presidential and vice-presidential nominees. See this story. The Senate Republicans want to pair the idea with a separate idea regarding campaign finance. But the House is uninterested in that. UPDATE: a bill could still pass and take effect in time if it has an emergency clause, but that takes a two-thirds vote in each house. The House has adjourned and will not reconvene until May 22.
It now seems likely that the Democratic Party will sue Ohio over its early August certification deadline. The proposed lawsuit is extremely likely to win. Early deadlines for candidates have been struck down in 30 states. Challenges to early deadlines are governing by the balancing test set forth in Anderson v Celebrezze, the 1983 U.S.Supreme Court decision that struck down Ohio’s deadline for independent presidential candidate petitions. Courts are instructed to weigh the harm to the state if the deadline is struck down, versus the harm done to voters if the deadline is upheld. In this case, it is obvious that there is no harm to Ohio if the deadline is struck down. No other state has such an early deadline. On the other hand, the harm done to voters if the deadline were upheld would be immense.
And if that weren’t enough, the U.S. Supreme Court decision Trump v Anderson, the unanimous decision that came down earlier this year, says the relationship between the president and the entire body of the U.S. public is so important, presidential elections cannot be limited by state laws that create a “patchwork”, in which presidential candidates are on the ballot in some states but not all of them.
On April 29, the Socialist Workers Party announced that Margaret Trowe, the vice-presidential nominee, had resigned from the ticket for health reasons. The new nominee is Dennis Richter, of Texas.
On May 7, an Ohio House Committee amended SB 92 to replace the original contents with a provision moving the deadline for parties to certify their presidential nominees from 90 days before the general election, to 74 days before the election. The Ohio legislative website still does not have the amended bill, so it is unknown whether it also relaxes the petition deadline for independent candidates.