The Oregon Green Party did not run any statewide candidates in 2010, so that jeopardized its ballot status for future years. Oregon permits a party to remain ballot-qualified either by having polled 1% for a statewide race in the last election, or by keeping or restoring its registration to one-half of 1%. During 2011 the party’s registration had been below that benchmark. However, over the last few months, the party has been conducting a registration drive, and it now meets the one-half of 1% standard, and is safely on the ballot this year. Thanks to Blair Bobier for this news. In Oregon, the Green Party is called the Pacific Green Party.

According to the Kansas Secretary of State, in June 2012, the ballot-qualified Reform Party nominated Chuck Baldwin for President and Joseph Martin for Vice-President, and certified these candidates to the Secretary of State.

Chuck Baldwin was the Constitution Party’s presidential nominee in 2008. In 2010 he moved from Florida to Kila, Montana, where he is a pastor. He has a web page but it doesn’t indicate that he is running for President, or any office, in 2012. During 2011 he had said he would run as a Republican for Lieutenant Governor of Montana, but later he changed his mind and did not run for any office in the 2012 primary in Montana. It is not known if Baldwin wishes to run for President in 2012, or even if he has been informed of his nomination.

In 2008, the Reform Party of Kansas had nominated Baldwin for President. The Reform Party of Kansas nominated Ralph Nader in 2004.

On July 18, the Justice Party filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Hawaii petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties. That deadline is February 23. The case is Justice Party v Nago, cv-12-403. The case also challenges the Hawaii practice of disqualifying signatures signed by rural voters, when those rural voters show their post office box as their address. The state wants a residence address, but in many parts of rural Hawaii, the residence address is a 13-digit identifier used by the real property tax office, and an ordinary individual doesn’t know that number without checking paperwork.

The Hawaii deadline for newly-qualifying parties was in April in 1986, and a U.S. District Court in 1986 issued injunctive relief against that deadline on the grounds that it was too early. However, the attorney for the Libertarian Party, which won that injunctive relief, never returned to court later to get declaratory relief. Since then, the legislature not only did not change the law to create a later deadline, it did the opposite, and made it even earlier.

No other state has such an early petition deadline, when the laws of all the states are compared, using the later method for placing a candidate on the November ballot with the party label. Hawaii does have a procedure for an independent presidential candidate to get on the ballot, which has a September deadline. But that procedure does not permit the party label on the ballot.