Only two candidates are on the ballot for Florida State House, district 12, in Jacksonville: Republican incumbent Lake Ray and Green Party nominee Karen Morian. Morian has been endorsed by the Florida AFL-CIO, Duval Democrats, Jacksonville Young Democrats, Florida NOW, and other influential groups. Here is a link to the Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville’s daily newspaper) web page that has information about both candidates.
On October 10, the three ballot-listed candidates for U.S. Senate from Arizona debated each other. See this story. The three candidates are Democratic nominee Richard Carmona, Republican nominee Jeff Flake, and Libertarian nominee Marc Victor.
A Libertarian voter in Chester County, South Carolina, received this absentee ballot, which only lists President Obama and Mitt Romney for President. The voter complained and was told there wasn’t room for any other candidates. Now the county says it only printed one such ballot and all the others include all the legally-qualified candidates. However, neither the county nor the State Board of Elections will talk about how such a faulty ballot came to be printed.
On July 17, U.S. District Court Judge Richard W. Story dismissed the lawsuit Green Party of Georgia v Kemp, before the state had even filed its Answer to the Complaint. The Green and Constitution Parties immediately filed for reconsideration, but three months later, that request for reconsideration is still pending. It is unusual for requests for reconsideration to be pending more than a month or so. The case challenges the Georgia procedures for minor party and independent presidential candidates to get on the ballot.
Judge Story had dismissed the case without seeming to even notice that the precedents he relied on do not pertain to presidential candidates. Both the U.S. Supreme Court (in Anderson v Celebrezze) and the 11th circuit (in Bergland v Harris) had previously ruled that ballot access for presidential candidates involves a different set of standards.
Thomas D. Elias, a syndicated columnist in over 50 California daily newspapers, here celebrates the exclusion of minor party candidates from the November ballot. He is not factually correct when he says that there are no minor party candidates on the ballot for any congressional or state office. There are three Peace & Freedom Party candidates for the legislature on the November ballot. All three ran in races in which only one major party member filed to be on the primary ballot. Naturally, when only one major party member runs in a top-two primary, that leaves an opening for a minor party candidate to come in second. All three Peace & Freedom Party nominees happened to have been write-in candidates in the primary.
Elias seems to have no concept that general election season is one of the biggest and most important “public forums” in any free country. Locking out unpopular viewpoints from the general election campaign season represents a massive shrinkage of the free circulation of ideas.
Elias also reveals an unconscious contempt for ordinary voters. When a voter votes for a minor party nominee, that voter understands that he or she is not supporting the major party nominee whom that voter might prefer to the other major party nominee. Because Elias disagrees with that voter’s behavior, he wants to use the power of election law to interfere with voter freedom. This is a highly authoritarian action.
