On August 15, the Vermont Secretary of State and Attorney General asked the Vermont Supreme Court to reverse the lower court order that had given Justice Party presidential nominee Rocky Anderson more time to get his signatures verified by town clerks. In the meantime, Anderson now only needs ten more verified signatures, which he will probably obtain on August 16. The case is Anderson v State of Vermont.

The Vermont Supreme Court now has two cases before it on relating to the June petition deadline for independent candidates. As noted in earlier posts, Vermont is tied for having the nation’s earliest petition deadline for independent presidential candidates. The state it is tied with is North Carolina.

Larry Dodge died on July 17, 2012, at the age of 69. He was one of the founders of the Libertarian Party of Montana, and was its first nominee for statewide office in Montana. In 1982 he ran for U.S. Senator, and was the first U.S. Senate candidate to appear on a general election ballot in Montana for that office (other than Democratic and Republican nominees) since 1952. His campaign garnered considerable publicity because he visited every county in Montana, by canoe. He polled 3.87%, enough to keep the Libertarian Party on the ballot for the next election. He also ran for Governor as a Libertarian in 1984, polling 3.25%.

He was the co-founder of the Fully Informed Jury Association, and he was the campaign manager for Native American activist Russell Means when Means sought the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party in 1988. Means was defeated for that nomination by Ron Paul. Dodge had a doctorate in Sociology and was known for his kindness and ability to get along with virtually anyone. Thanks to his widow, Honey Lanham Dodge, for this news.

As reported earlier, at the Tennessee Democratic Party primary on August 2, Mark Clayton won the nomination for U.S. Senate, even though he had a platform at odds with the platform of the Democratic Party, and even though he had only once in his life voted in a Tennessee Democratic primary. That one instance was in 2008, when he was also a candidate for U.S. Senate. He did not win the 2008 Democratic primary.

On August 15, another Democrat who ran for U.S. Senate in this month’s primary, Larry Crim, sued the Tennessee Democratic Party, charging that the party knew Clayton was not a bona fide Democrat, but that the party let him file anyway, because the party was prejudiced against Crim and knew that without Clayton in the race, Crim would appear first on the primary ballot. Candidates are listed by alphabetical order in Tennessee primaries. Here is the complaint. The case is Crim v Tennessee Democratic Party, middle district, 3:12-0838.