On September 19, Free & Equal announced that Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Virgil Goode have each agreed to participate in a presidential debate on October 23, Tuesday, at 8 p.m. central time. Free & Equal is sponsoring the debate. The Republican and Democratic nominees are also invited but it is very likely they will not attend. The last debate between the Democratic and Republican nominees will have been on October 22.

Free & Equal invited every candidate who was either on the ballot in states containing a majority of the electoral vote, or who have registered at 1% in a national opinion poll.

The event will be at the University Club of Chicago.

On September 19, Pew Research Center released a presidential poll. Among the questions were whether the respondent had ever heard of any of three particular presidential candidates. 26% had heard of Gary Johnson, 18% had heard of Jill Stein, and 9% had heard of Virgil Goode.

The poll asked respondents whether they are voting for President Obama or Mitt Romney. 2% of the registered voters, and 1% of the likely voters, volunteered someone else, but the poll does not report further details. The poll does show that independent voters are far more likely to vote for a minor party presidential candidate. Registered or self-identified Democrats plan to vote 89% for Obama, 10% for Romney, and 1% volunteered “someone else” or undecided. Registered or self-identified Republicans plan to vote 6% for Obama, 91% for Romney, and 3% other. But independents plan to vote 44% for Obama, 42% for Romney, and 14% other. Here are the full results.

Polls consistently report that independent voters support minor party candidates to a much greater degree than Republican or Democratic voters do. Ironically, Independent Voting, and the California Independent Voters Project, hold themselves out as representing the interests of independent voters, and yet both those organizations advocate top-two systems, which prevent minor party candidates from running in the general election.

South Dakota Representative Brian Gosch faces a possibility of being removed from the November ballot. He is running for re-election in the 32nd district. If he is removed, voters will have no choice to make. The district elects two representatives, and there are only three candidates, two Republicans and one Democrat. If Gosch, one of the Republicans, is removed, there will be only two candidates left on the ballot and voters choose two. South Dakota is one of five states that bans all write-in votes in all elections.

Gosch notarized his own petitions when he sought a place on the Republican primary ballot earlier this year. South Dakota law does not permit a notary public to notarize a document for himself or herself. Gosch said, technically, he was notarizing the petition on behalf of the individual who circulated the petition, and not notarizing it for himself, and the Secretary of State therefore accepted the filing. Gosch then won the Republican nomination. However, another South Dakota Republican, Stephanie Strong, then sued the Secretary of State. On September 14, a Circuit Court Judge in Pennington County ordered the Secretary of State to either remove Gosch from the ballot, or appear at a court hearing on October 3 to explain why he didn’t do that. See this story.

Strong brought the lawsuit after her own petition to get on this year’s Republican primary ballot was rejected by the Secretary of State. She was running for U.S. House and needed 1,955 valid signatures. She submitted 2,018 signatures but the Secretary of State determined some of her petitions were invalid.