On September 4, the Virginia State Board of Elections held three hours of hearings over the November ballot. The Board then placed all three petitioning presidential candidates on the ballot. They are Virgil Goode, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein. Republican Party attorneys appeared at the hearing to argue that the Goode and Johnson petitions are invalid. Virgil Goode himself testified about the Constitution Party’s petition, because the Republican Party challenged some of the petition sheets that Goode himself had circulated.

It is possible that a lawsuit will be filed against the State Board of Elections by various Republican voters and activists, to remove either or both Johnson and Goode. UPDATE: here is a lengthy story from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Kentucky has four independent candidates for U.S. House this year. That is the largest number of independent U.S. House candidates who have ever appeared on government-printed ballots in Kentucky, ever since the state started using government-printed ballots in 1892. This year there is an independent candidate on the ballot in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th districts. Kentucky has six districts.

Two of the independent candidates do not live in Kentucky. David Lewis, running in the 4th district, lives in Ohio and ran in the Republican primary in 2012 against the Speaker of the House, John Boehner. Andrew Beacham, running in the 2nd district, lives in Indiana. Here is an article about them. They are both supporters of Randall Terry. The U.S. Constitution, Article One, has no residency requirement for anyone to run for Congress except that the candidate live in the state on election day.

No independent candidate had been elected to the Kentucky legislature since 1923, but then in 2006 an independent, Bob Leeper, was elected to the State Senate, and he was re-elected as an independent in 2010. Independent candidates in Kentucky are injured by the state’s use of a party-column device, but Leeper was able to overcome that problem.

Kentucky only has one minor party candidate on the ballot for U.S. House this year, Libertarian Craig R. Astor in the 2nd district.

This year, the only two candidates on the Georgia ballot for one of the statewide Public Service Commission races are incumbent Stan Wise, a Republican, and David A. Staples, the Libertarian nominee. This is a partisan race.

Georgia Libertarians also had a nominee in a two-way race for the same office in 2008. That Libertarian, John Monds, polled 1,076,760 votes (33.4%), and carried four counties, including Fulton and DeKalb, two very populous counties.

Staples’ campaign web page is www.votestaples.com.