On June 26, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted ruled that Gregory Jolivette cannot be an independent candidate for the legislature, even though he submitted enough valid signatures to run for the 51st State House seat. See this story.

Ohio does not have registration by party, but election officials do keep a record of which party’s primary ballot a voter chooses. Ohio law is vague about who can be an independent candidate. Section 3513.04 only bans people who were defeated in a party primary from being an independent candidate. But by tradition, Ohio election officials have expanded that ban, and regularly block people on the basis that they have recently voted in a party primary, or recently were on a political party committee.

As the story reveals, the Secretary of State used personal details about Jolivette’s political activity to justify preventing him from being an independent candidate. Jolivette may sue, although the precedents on this issue in Ohio state court are not very favorable.

Eric Golub has this op-ed in the Washington Times. He says that Ron Paul supporters should not be permitted to attend the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August. His column does not acknowledge that many official delegates to that convention are Ron Paul supporters.

On June 22, Georgia filed a motion to dismiss the ballot access lawsuit filed last month by the Green Party and the Constitution Party. Although the state’s brief is 17 pages long, not once does it mention either of the precedents that the case relies on. The lawsuit is Green Party of Georgia v State of Georgia and Brian Kemp, 1:12-cv-1822. The lawsuit charges that Georgia’s ballot access law, as applied to presidential candidates, requires too many signatures.

The parties base their case on Anderson v Celebrezze, and Bergland v Harris. In Anderson v Celebrezze, the U.S. Supreme Court said that states must be more lenient in presidential elections, than for other office. Bergland v Harris is an 11th circuit decision from 1985 that repeated that holding, and said Georgia’s requirement at that time, for president, might be unconstitutionally difficult. At the time the requirement for president was 2.5% of the number of registered voters. The 11th circuit remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court, but then the legislature lowered the petition requirement to 1% of the number of registered voters and the case ended.

The state’s brief mentions all the ballot access precedents that upheld Georgia’s requirements for office other than President, but nowhere mentions either Anderson v Celebrezze or Bergland v Harris.