The recent news about Michigan Congressman Thad McCotter’s petitions being invalid this year prompted some research into his previous primary ballot access petitions. According to this story on Politico, the 2010 petition was also invalid, but no one seems to have noticed at the time, and he was on the Republican primary ballot in 2010 with no difficulty. Thanks to Daniel Sachs for the link.
As reported earlier, at the Tennessee Democratic Party primary on August 2, Mark Clayton won the nomination for U.S. Senate, even though he had a platform at odds with the platform of the Democratic Party, and even though he had only once in his life voted in a Tennessee Democratic primary. That one instance was in 2008, when he was also a candidate for U.S. Senate. He did not win the 2008 Democratic primary.
On August 15, another Democrat who ran for U.S. Senate in this month’s primary, Larry Crim, sued the Tennessee Democratic Party, charging that the party knew Clayton was not a bona fide Democrat, but that the party let him file anyway, because the party was prejudiced against Crim and knew that without Clayton in the race, Crim would appear first on the primary ballot. Candidates are listed by alphabetical order in Tennessee primaries. Here is the complaint. The case is Crim v Tennessee Democratic Party, middle district, 3:12-0838.
On August 15, U.S. District Court Judge Peter Economus heard oral arguments in Obama for America v Husted, 2:12-cv-636. The issue is whether Ohio must let all voters participate in early voting during the weekend before the general election. The basis for the lawsuit is that Ohio lets members of the military use early voting on those days. See this story.
The New York Conservative Party will formally choose a presidential nominee on September 8. No one believes there is any suspense about the decision. The Conservative Party has never nominated anyone for President who wasn’t also the Republican Party nominee.
On August 15, Jill Stein submitted, or is about to submit, petitions to be on the ballot in Montana and Idaho. Both petitions are considered to be independent candidate petitions. In Montana, though, the state will print “Green” next to Stein’s name on the ballot, assuming the petition had enough valid signatures. In Idaho, the label will be “independent” because Idaho doesn’t allow any other label for independent candidates.
Assuming the Idaho petition is valid, this will be the first time the Green Party presidential nominee, or any Green Party nominee for any partisan office, has ever been on the ballot in Idaho. In 2000, Idaho was one of the seven states in which Ralph Nader did not qualify. The Idaho ballot access laws for independent presidential candidates were eased in 2011, as a result of Ralph Nader winning a lawsuit against the old number of signatures. That lawsuit was Daien v Ysursa, won in 2010.
Rocky Anderson, presidential candidate, also expects to qualify as an independent in Idaho. Ballot-qualified parties in Idaho are Democratic, Republican, Constitution, and Libertarian. Ballot-qualified parties in Montana are Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Americans Elect.
