On August 9, a U.S. District Court in West Virginia enjoined the state from enforcing a campaign finance law that limits how much individuals may donate to groups that make independent expenditures for or against candidates for state office. See this story.
The Kansas independent candidate petition is noon on August 6. The independent candidate petition for Jill Stein was submitted on the afternoon of August 6, but the Secretary of State rejected the petition because it was filed a few hours after noon.
However, it is probable that the petition didn’t have enough valid signatures anyway. The law requires 5,000, but the petition only had 5,520 signatures. All the signatures were gathered in the week before the deadline. The party couldn’t get started sooner because it took time to find a list of candidates for presidential elector.
On August 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, denied the Libertarian Party’s request to rehear the case over whether election officials must count write-ins for declared presidential write-in candidates.
Federal law requires jurisdictions that vote for President to tell the National Archives the number of votes received by each candidate for presidential elector. This point was never brought up in the lawsuit. But it leaves open the possibility of a new lawsuit, raising that point. It is hoped that some of this year’s presidential candidates will file for declared write-in status in the District of Columbia this year. To file as a declared write-in candidate, the presidential candidate must find three D.C. voters who have lived in Washington, D.C., for at least three years, to serve as presidential elector candidates.
On August 9, the Sixth Circuit issued a 7-page order, denying the request of Tennessee election officials to remove the Green Party and the Constitution Party from the November 2012 ballot. However, the Sixth Circuit did grant the state’s request for a stay of the U.S. District Court order that said there must be a random procedure to give each party an equal chance to get the top line on the ballot.
In February 2012, a U.S. District Court in Tennessee had struck down the state’s ballot access law for newly-qualifying parties, and had also ordered the state to print the two plaintiff parties on the 2012 ballot. The U.S. District Court had also struck down the law, giving the two largest parties the best spots on the ballot.
The Sixth Circuit has not decided any of these issues at this time. Instead, the Court simply set forth what rules should be in place, pending a decision. The order says, “The state has not shown why the plaintiffs’ past support – which, as noted by the district court, consists of nearly 20,000 votes for the Green Party and almost 10,000 signatures for the Constitution Party – is so insubstantial as to create a real possibility of frustrating the State’s democratic process.” The reference to the 10,000 signatures for the Constitution Party, and the 20,000 votes for the Green Party, is to past elections, not anything related to this year’s election.
The Wisconsin deadline for independent presidential candidates, and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties, has passed. Four petitions were submitted for President: Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Jill Stein (Green), Gloria LaRiva (Party for Socialism and Liberation), and Jerry White (Socialist Equality Party).
The state elections office rejected the petitions of Jill Stein and Jerry White because the board says there is a residency requirement for presidential elector candidates, and a group must have a resident in each U.S. House district. However, as noted on yesterday’s post about Jerry White, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that presidential petitions may not be rejected on those grounds. The 2004 decision was won by Ralph Nader. The Stein and White campaigns will point this out to the state elections officials.
The Constitution Party and Americans Elect are ballot-qualified parties in Wisconsin, and thus no petition is needed for their presidential nominees. The Party for Socialism and Liberation petitioned for Gloria LaRiva instead of its actual presidential candidate, Peta Lindsey, because Wisconsin will not print the name of presidential candidates on the ballot if those presidential candidates don’t meet the qualifications listed in the U.S. Constitution. Lindsey is under the age of 35.
