According to this news story, Michigan can cancel the September 5 primary in the 11th U.S. House district if only one person files in the Republican primary and/or the Democratic primary. So far no Democrat has announced any intention to run, and one of the two Republicans may withdraw to save the cost of holding the special primary. The special election is for a term that would last only two months.
Gary Johnson supporters in the Atlanta, Georgia area will hold a demonstration outside the CNN (Cable News Network) Center from Sunday, July 15, at 11 a.m., continuously until July 16 at 11 p.m. The demonstration is to draw public awareness that all the public opinion polls that CNN sponsors or co-sponsors invariably include only President Obama and Mitt Romney. Also, the network has given very little news coverage to the Johnson campaign.
For more information about the demonstration, e-mail Chris Hill at protestCNN@gmail.com.
Several Massachusetts newspapers are reporting that independent Seth Moulton could conceivably be elected to the U.S. House this year. Although the Democratic primary is not until September 6, it is too late for Moulton to get on the Democratic primary ballot. If he is going to be an independent, he needs 2,000 valid signatures by July 31. See this story and this story.
It is certain that the incumbent Democrat, John F. Tierney, will be the Democratic nominee. He is the only person who is on the Democratic primary ballot for that seat. However, as the news stories explain, he has lost support recently.
The ability of an independent candidate to get on the November ballot as late as July 31, or even later, is one of the advantages of an election system that does not use “top-two open primary” rules. If Massachusetts had a top-two open primary, it would be too late for anyone to enter the race this late in the election year.
Judge Joseph Lodge, who is a Superior Court Judge in Coconino County, Arizona, will seek re-election as the Libertarian nominee. First he must win the Libertarian primary, but he only needs 15 write-in votes to achieve that, assuming no one else receives more write-ins. No one’s name will be printed on the ballot for that office in the Libertarian primary.
Lodge is a Democrat, but he was removed from the Democratic primary ballot because his petition didn’t specify which seat he was running for. He did have enough valid signatures. See this story. The person who challenged him, Cathleen Nichols, is a Justice of the Peace and also a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Superior Court Judge.
Large-population counties in Arizona do not have partisan elections for Superior Court Judge, but smaller counties, like Coconino County, do. The primary is August 28. Arizona already has one other Superior Court Judge who is a Libertarian. He is John Buttrick, but he is in Maricopa County, which does not have partisan elections for Superior Court Judge.
The print edition of the New York Times has this fairly long article on Jill Stein and the Green Party. It says that Stein is the first Green Party “candidate” to qualify for primary season matching funds. Actually, Ralph Nader received $667,000 in primary season matching funds when he was the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 2000.
Slate has this article commenting on the New York Times article, written by David Weigel. He originally wrote that Cynthia McKinney received primary matching funds in 2008, when she was the Green Party’s presidential candidate. But then he found out that wasn’t correct, and he re-wrote his story, but never pointed out that Nader did receive primary season matching funds as the Green Party candidate in 2000.
Both the New York Times article, and the Slate article, are unfair to Ralph Nader. The New York Times story says Nader in 2000 “only” received 3% of the vote. But Nader’s showing in 2000 was the highest percentage of the vote that a party to the left of the Democrats had polled since 1924. Henry Wallace in 1948, and Norman Thomas in 1932, each ran historic races, but each only got 2% of the vote. The Slate article claims that Nader “undermined” the Green Party in 2004, but carries no specifics. Nader in 2004, if he were so inclined, could have challenged the Green Party petition in Pennsylvania. The 2004 Green Party petition in Pennsylvania only had a few hundred more signatures than the legal requirement, but neither Nader nor anyone else challenged it.
