The Connecticut petition deadline for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, is August 8. It appears that the only presidential petition likely to succeed in Connecticut is the Libertarian Party petition. The state requires 7,500 valid signatures. The Green Party made a valiant attempt, but seems to only have 7,000 signatures in hand.

The FEC has still not approved the Jill Stein matching funds application, although that approval is expected soon. The Independent Party of Connecticut is ballot-qualified for president, and has the freedom to nominate a presidential candidate. There is some indication that the Independent Party of Connecticut is leaning toward nominating Rocky Anderson.

The Constitution Party did not attempt a Connecticut petition. Petitioning in all the New England states is intrinsically more burdensome than it is in the remainder of the country. The New England states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Connecticut are the only states that require petitions to be transported to various town clerks, then collected, then taken to the Secretary of State’s office. Because federal law requires all state election offices to have their own statewide voter registration list, there is no rational reason for these cumbersome procedures to survive.

Although the South has the nation’s worst ballot access laws, New England is the second-worst region for ballot access. Massachusetts and Maine have the nation’s most restrictive laws on how a candidate gets on the primary ballot of a small ballot-qualified party. Maine has the nation’s most burdensome procedure for a new party to qualify by petition (the requirement is 5% of the last vote cast, and no one who is a registered member of a qualified party may sign). Vermont is tied for having the nation’s earliest petition deadline for independent presidential candidates. New Hampshire is the only state that requires an unqualified party to notify the state of its presidential nominee in June. Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire don’t permit presidential stand-ins on petitions. Many of these laws should have long ago been held unconstitutional, but the federal judges in the First Circuit seem markedly biased against minor parties.

Fifteen days ago, the Georgia Green Party and the Georgia Constitution Party asked for reconsideration in the ballot access case. The Georgia Attorney General has not responded. It is somewhat unusual for a request for reconsideration to be filed, and to elicit no response from the other side.

The case challenges the Georgia ballot access laws for President, which are so stringent, no one has successfully petitioned for President in Georgia since 2000. The U.S. District Court had dismissed the case on the grounds that the U.S. Supreme Court opinion from 1971, Jenness v Fortson, means those procedures are constitutional. But the parties had then asked for reconsideration, pointing out that Jenness v Fortson did not concern presidential ballot access, and also that more recently, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the 11th circuit, had both said presidential ballot access is entitled to more protection than ballot access for other office. Georgia is in the 11th circuit.

Ballotpedia has analyzed the primary election returns from August 7. See here. In Kansas, 34% of all incumbent legislators running for re-election who had primary opponents were defeated. Kansas has closed primaries.

In Michigan, which has an open primary, 14% of all legislative incumbents running for re-election who had opponents were defeated. In Missouri, which also has an open primary, 23% of the legislative incumbents running for re-election who had opponents were defeated.

But in Washington state, which has a top-two primary, not a single legislative incumbent was defeated for re-election. These results confirm earlier research that no system is kinder to incumbents running for re-election than top-two systems. In California’s top-two primary in June this year, no incumbents were defeated. Thanks to Eric O’Keefe for the link.