Tennessee has verified the validity of the independent presidential petitions for Gary Johnson and Merlin Miller, but says the Rocky Anderson petition only has 255 valid signatures, and 275 are needed. Anderson volunteers will work with election officials to find signatures that may have been improperly rejected.
The Green Party and Constitution Parties didn’t need independent presidential petitions because they are ballot-qualified parties.
On August 21, the Ninth Circuit issued an order in Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County v Bowen, the case over California’s residency requirement for petition circulators. The law says they cannot work outside of their home district. California and Pennsylvania are the only states that still have residency requirements within a district for petition circulators, and the Pennsylvania requirement has been declared unconstitutional, at least as applied to general election petitions.
California had argued that because it doesn’t enforce the law, the plaintiffs don’t have standing. Plaintiffs had argued that the Secretary of State’s web page misleads people, because it mentions the requirement and does not say that it isn’t enforced. By contrast, the Secretary of State’s web page also mentions the one-year residency requirement for candidates for the legislature, but an asterisk on the web page says that requirement is not enforced.
Presumably, in mediation, the plaintiffs will ask that the Secretary of State’s web page indicate that the residency requirement for circulators is not enforced, and also that the Secretary of State redesign the petition forms so the circulator is no longer forced to sign a declaration that he or she lives in the district.
See this story in the Reno Gazette-Journal, about the pending lawsuit to remove Nevada’s “None of the above” from the ballot for statewide office. The case has a hearing in U.S. District Court in Reno on August 22.
Ross Miller, Nevada’s elected Secretary of State and a Democrat, participated in a mixed martial arts fight on Saturday, August 18. See this story. He says he had always wanted to do that, and that he is “retiring” from the sport. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
Thirty-five states, including North Carolina, provide that a presidential candidate who is not on the ballot may file to have his or her write-ins counted. The vast majority of the deadlines for doing that are in October. North Carolina, somewhat irrationally, says the declaration is due in early August. North Carolina also requires 500 valid signatures to file for declared write-in status. The Green Party is somewhat likely to sue to get more time to file for write-in presidential status. North Carolina is in the 4th circuit, and the 4th circuit is protective of write-in candidates. In 1989 it struck down Maryland’s law that required declared write-in candidates to pay a filing fee of $290. That case is Dixon v Maryland State Administrative Board of Election Laws, 878 F.2d 776. Also in 2000, a U.S. District Court in West Virginia followed the Dixon precedent and struck down the West Virginia law that required write-in candidates to pay filing fees.
