The September 3 Telegraph Herald of Dubuque, Iowa, has an editorial, praising Secretary of State Matt Schultz for voting to keep Gary Johnson on the ballot. Schultz is a Republican, and the editorial says Schultz deserves credit for voting in favor of voting rights, and against his own party. Unfortunately the newspaper does not permit free viewing of its content on-line, so no link to that editorial is possible.
The Virginia Board of Elections has said that the petition to place Constitution Party presidential nominee Virgil Goode on the ballot has enough valid signatures. The petition has more than twice as many signatures as are required.
However, the Virginia Republican Party has looked at the petition and asserts that it should be rejected. One basis for the Republican Party’s statement is that Virgil Goode himself got 3 signatures on one particular day on his own Virginia petition, yet the party claims it has proof he was physically in Alabama that same day. Goode was in Alabama part of that day, but he got home to Virginia and collected a few signatures that evening.
Another basis for the Republican Party’s claim is that one circulator collected approximately 250 signatures in one day. The Republican Party claims this is impossible. Actually, there are professional petition circulators who have collected as many as 600 or 700 signatures in one day. Some petitioners are very good, and when they are in a high-traffic location, they can collect more than 500 in a single day.
The presidential ballot is still not settled in twenty states. States in which the deadline for independent or minor party presidential candidates to file lies in the future are Alabama, Arizona, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Rhode Island.
States in which the deadline has passed, and in which certain parties have submitted petitions, but the petitions haven’t been checked yet, are Connecticut, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Wyoming (the only petition that Virginia hasn’t checked yet is the Jill Stein petition). Also Arkansas already preliminarily rejected some petitions, but some of the groups that submitted them are working to show that the original determination was erroneous.
States in which courts may either put a presidential candidate on, or take him off, are Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.
On September 1 (Saturday), the Ohio voters who challenged Gary Johnson’s placement on the general election ballot withdrew their challenge. They did not explain why they withdrew. Thanks to Gary Sinawski for this news.
In a slightly related development, on August 31, the U.S. Court of Appeals, 6th circuit, dismissed the Ohio legislature’s appeal of the 2011 U.S. District Court decision that put the Libertarian Party on the ballot for 2012. The 6th circuit said the case is moot.
Ohio has now been without a constitutional ballot access law for newly-qualifying parties for six full years. It will be interesting to see if the 2013 session of the legislature passes a valid law. According to 52 court precedents from around the country, petition deadlines as early as March are unconstitutional. Yet in all six years, there has been no bill introduced in the Ohio legislature to set a petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties that would be upheld. The only reasonable solution is to eliminate the requirement that newly-qualifying parties must nominate by primary. Very few other states requires that newly-qualifying parties must nominate by primary, as a condition of having their nominees on the general election ballot with the party label. Ohio has a strong preference for an early primary, especially in presidential election years. If Ohio were willing to hold its congressional/state office primary in the late summer, the problem would be easier to solve, but given the state preference for an early primary, the state needs to exempt newly-qualifying parties from having a primary.
Illinois has 18 U.S. House seats. This year, there are three independent candidates on the ballot for U.S. House in Illinois. Three is not a big number, but it is the largest number of independent candidates on the ballot for U.S. House from Illinois since 1920, when there were also three.
Independent candidate ballot access in Illinois improved in 2007, as a result of the lawsuit Lee v Keith. That lawsuit struck down the December (of the year before the election) deadline for non-presidential independent candidates. Also, in years following redistricting, the number of signatures for an independent is exactly 5,000, whereas in other election years it is 5% of the last vote cast, which is typically between 10,000 and 18,000 signatures.
The three independents on the ballot are Marcus Lewis in the 2nd district, John Monaghan in the 7th district, and John Hartman in the 13th district. The Marcus Lewis campaign is considered strong, because the Democratic nominee in the 2nd district is Jesse Jackson, Jr., who has been absent from Congress for several months due to illness. Here is a story about Jesse Jackson, Jr. Here is a story about independent candidate John Hartman, who has been polling at 9% even though, according to the story, he has barely campaigned, other than circulating his own petition earlier in the year.
Illinois also has two minor party candidates for U.S. House on the ballot this year. They are both Green nominees: Nancy Wade in the 5th district, and Paula Bradshaw in the 12th district.
