On September 9, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously expanded the ability of independent candidates to run for judicial office, including not only judgeship elections, but elections for Clerk of a Court. The decision is State ex rel Coughlin v Summit County Board of Elections, 2013-3867.

Ohio and Michigan have peculiar elections for judicial office. Candidates are either nominated in partisan primaries or in party conventions, or they can petition directly onto the general election ballot if they do not wish to be entangled with political parties. But, oddly, no party names ever appear on the ballot for these elections. Ambiguity in the English language makes it unclear whether to refer to such elections as “partisan” or “non-partisan.”

Kevin J. Coughlin petitioned to be on the November 5, 2013 ballot as an independent candidate for Clerk of the Municipal Court in Stow, a city in Summit County. County election officials kept him off the ballot on the grounds that he was associated with the Republican Party. Ohio voter registration forms do not ask voters to choose a party. But Ohio is very fussy about keeping independent candidates off the ballot if they have associated with a qualified political party, so if challengers can show that an independent candidate has associated closely with a party, he or she is generally removed from the ballot. However, the Ohio Supreme Court said that judicial elections are not covered by this restriction.

Another issue in the lawsuit was whether the candidate had filed his lawsuit too late. He was told he was off the ballot on July 15, and the day after, he asked for a transcript of the Board of Elections hearing that excluded him. The Board didn’t furnish the transcript until August 1. The candidate sued on August 8. The Board said he filed the case too late, but the Supreme Court disagreed and said if the case was filed late, that was mostly the fault of the Board for taking so long to furnish the transcript.

The New York City Board of Elections has disqualified three independent candidates for Mayor, because their petitions were obviously deficient on their face. Generally this is because the total number of signatures on their petition was a smaller number than the legal requirement of 3,750 signatures. The three that have been removed are William Melisky, Walter Iwuachiw, and Jimmy McMillan. McMillan has challenged his removal in court.

There may be other candidates removed if anyone challenges their petitions and the challenge succeeds. Nevertheless, it seems likely that there will be a record number of candidates for Mayor on the November ballot. Here is a link to the blog post of September 3, which named all the candidates who filed.

The Wisconsin Libertarian Party recently endorsed a campaign to make it possible for individual homeowners to more easily obtain electricity from solar power. The party’s stance then got publicity in Midwest Energy News, an on-line news service established in 2010 about developments in energy policy in the midwest states. From there, the story was picked up by Think Progress, which re-wrote the news story to emphasize that in this instance, the Green Party and the Libertarian Party were in agreement on an energy issue.