The independent presidential petitions for Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson both succeeded. They will both be listed as “independent”. They will join the presidential nominees of the four ballot-qualified parties: Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Constitution.
Idaho requires 1,000 valid signatures for independent presidential candidates, due in August. Americans Elect never qualified in Idaho; even though the signatures were collected, they were never submitted.
Three candidates are on the Missouri ballot for U.S. Senate: incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill, Republican nominee Todd Akin, and Libertarian nominee Jonathan Dine. Yet a recent Mason-Dixon poll conducted for the Post-Dispatch and New 4 asks voters, “If the 2012 general election for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat were held today, would you vote for Claire McCaskill, the Democrat, or Todd Akin, the Republican?” See here. Scroll down.
The results of that poll, we are told, are: 50% for McCaskill, 41% for Akin. Presumably, 9% of the voters either said “I don’t know” or said they are voting for the Libertarian, or at least for someone else. One wonders why pollsters don’t present the actual list of candidates to respondents, especially when there are only three. An earlier Rasmussen Poll did present respondents with the choice of McCaskill, Akin, or “someone else” and that polled resulted in 9% voting for “someone else.” See here for Nate Silver’s discussion of that poll, written before the Post-Dispatch Poll results had been released. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link to the Mason-Dixon Poll.
Here is an interview with Jonathan Dine, conducted by Eric Dondero at LibertarianRepublican.
Andrew Straw, an Indiana Green Party activist, has this op-ed in the South Bend Tribune, criticizing Indiana’s ballot access laws. Straw seems to be the most energetic activist against Indiana’s ballot access laws in many decades. Indiana is one of only two states in which no statewide minor party or independent petition has succeeded in over ten years (the other such state is Georgia).
On August 24, a federal lawsuit was filed in Ohio over a recent directive of the Secretary of State that eliminated the weekend before the November election as a time when voters may vote. The case is Fair Elections Ohio v Husted, 12-cv-763, southern district. See this story.
A lawsuit filed a few weeks ago challenged Ohio practices that permitted some counties to have more early voting days and hours than other counties. The Secretary of State responded to that lawsuit by imposing uniform days and hours for early voting for all counties. But, when he did that, he eliminated the weekend before the election. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
According to this story, a Maine PAC linked to the Republican Party is running ads in Maine, boosting the U.S. Senate candidacy of Cynthia Dill. Dill is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, but she is running a distant third behind Angus King (the leading independent candidate) and the Republican nominee. Presumably Republicans hope to persuade King voters to instead support Dill.
The Treasurer for the PAC, which is called Maine Freedom, also serves as the General Counsel to the Republican Governors Association.
