The Columbia Missourian has this story about the Libertarian presidential primary in Missouri, which is being held on February 7. Anyone could have got on that ballot by paying a filing fee of $1,000, but the only person who did so is James Ogle of California, so the article is about him. The article doesn’t explore the question of who else is seeking the party’s nomination at its national convention in May in Las Vegas, or why no one else filed for the primary.

The Columbia Missourian is published daily, both on paper and electronically. It was founded in 1908 as the nation’s first newspaper published by a School of Journalism, and also in 1992 became one of the first periodicals to put content on the web.

The link works, but it takes about 30 seconds to load after one clicks on it.

On January 31, the Virginia Senate Privileges and Elections Committee passed SB 62. It provides that voter registration forms should ask for a political party selection. The bill also says that parties would then be free to decide whether to let all voters vote in its primaries, or just members of the party, or just members of the party and independents, or just voters who didn’t vote in the primary of any other party. Under existing law, the voter registration form doesn’t ask the voter to choose a party, and any voter is free to vote in any party’s primary.

The bill would not permit voters to register into an unqualified party. However, the bill is vague as to whether the voter would write in the name of a party on a blank space, or whether the form would have checkboxes for the qualified parties.

The vote in Committee was 8-7.

The North Dakota Libertarian Party has decided ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its ballot access appeal. The 8th circuit had upheld the law, which requires a party that wants to have legislative candidates on the November ballot to persuade between 10% and 15% of all primary voters to choose that minor party’s primary ballot.

The law is so severe, no minor party nominee for state legislature has been on the North Dakota general election ballot since 1976.

The 8th circuit opinion is factually flawed. The opinion said that the primary vote test is the only ballot access barrier for minor parties, and that once a party submits its original ballot access petition of 15,000 signatures, it may stay on the ballot forever. This is utterly untrue. But when the factual error was pointed out to the 8th circuit in a request for a rehearing, the 8th circuit denied the request without comment.