The Jill Stein campaign believes it has received enough contributions to qualify for primary season matching funds. The paperwork will be submitted to the FEC for an official determination. Assuming she does receive the funds, she will be the second Green Party presidential candidate to have qualified; Ralph Nader in 2000 was the first. Nader received $664,151 in primary season matching funds in 2000.
Vermont requires independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, to submit 1,000 signatures (for statewide office) by June 14. This year, the Justice Party collected over 1,300 signatures to place its presidential nominee, Rocky Anderson, on the November ballot. However, because Vermont requires petitioning groups to first collect the signtures, then submit them to town clerks, then collect them again and take them to the Secretary of State, not all signatures were available by the deadline for submission. Here is the complaint.
On June 27, Rocky Anderson filed a lawsuit. He points out that candidates seeking a place on a presidential primary ballot do not follow this cumbersome procedure, but instead file directly with the Secretary of State. The lawsuit is Anderson v State of Vermont, filed in Superior Court in Montpelier. The Court will hold a hearing within the next two weeks.
On June 29, New York State Senator Adriano Espaillat, who was also a candidate for U.S. House in the June 26 New York Democratic primary against incumbent Congressman Charles Rangel, sued the New York City Board of Elections. The race is very close, and Espaillat says the New York City Board of Elections has broken state law by refusing to allow representatives of the Espaillat campaign to monitor and observe the vote-counting process. See this story. A hearing will be held on Monday, July 2.
The story also quotes New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has saying that the electronically-counted paper ballots are not reliable. However, the beauty of paper ballots is that if the vote-counting machines are suspected of being unreliable, a hand count is always possible. By contrast, under the old mechanical lever machines, there is no paper trail.
On June 26, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed HB 509, which extends the deadline for certain qualified parties to certify their presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The old law required the certification in early August, but now it is in early September. The bill only applies to parties that polled 20% of the vote in the last election. Other qualified parties still have the August deadline. There is no practical harm done to the qualified minor parties from being excluded from the bill, because they will all have their national conventions by mid-July.
The Libertarian Party has never been a ballot-qualified party in the District of Columbia. The law defines “party” as a group that polled at least 7,500 votes for a partisan office. Elections for “Shadow U.S. Senator” and “Shadow U.S. Representative” don’t count. This year, Libertarian Bruce Majors will attempt to gather 3,000 signatures to appear on the November ballot as the Libertarian nominee for Delegate to the U.S. House, which does count.
So far, there is no Republican running for that position, although there is a Green, Natale Stracuzzi. No Republican ran for that office in this year’s Republican primary.
Only once before has the Libertarian Party placed someone on the November ballot for Delegate. That was in 2000, when Rob Kampia received 4,594 votes, in a four-party race that included both major parties and a Socialist Workers Party nominee. See this story about the Majors 2012 candidacy.
