According to this story, Americans Elect starts collecting signatures in Wyoming this week. Other parties that are circulating in Wyoming are the Constitution Party and the Country Party. The Constitution Party is virtually finished.
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On October 17, the Missouri Senate convened and considered many amendments to two bills that would have altered the February 7, 2012 presidential primary. In the end, the Senate defeated all the proposed amendments and didn’t pass any bill on this subject. Frontloading HQ has the details here.
Although the February 7 presidential primary will now be held, it will not choose delegates to the Republican national convention. The Missouri Republican Party will use caucuses in March instead. Retaining the February 7 presidential primary will enable the state’s two ballot-qualified minor parties, the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party, to have their own presidential primaries. UPDATE: here is a newspaper story on the retention of the primary.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court currently has a Libertarian Party lawsuit over whether the state law allows presidential stand-in candidates on petitions. The party had filed the case on August 12, 2011. The state had originally expected to respond by October 17, but it has asked for another week to respond. The case is Libertarian Association of Massachusetts v Galvin, sj 2011-0348.
The Libertarian Party is hoping that the State Supreme Judicial Court will construe the existing law to mean that stand-ins are permitted for President. The law is ambiguous, but clearly allows stand-ins for other partisan office.
On October 17, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin H. Settle ordered Washington state to release the names and addresses of people who signed the 2009 referendum petition on civil unions for same-sex couples. Here is the 34-page decision in Doe v Reed, 3:09-cv-05456.
The people who circulated Referendum R-71 had originally filed this lawsuit in 2009, hoping to retain privacy for the people who had signed their petition. They had won the first round, in U.S. District Court in 2009, but the Ninth Circuit had then reversed the decision. Then the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case, and ruled that whether the names and addresses should be released depends on whether there is a likelihood that the signers would be harassed if their names were made public. The U.S. District Court then reviewed the evidence and in its October 17, 2011 decision, concluded that the signers have little to fear. The decision reviews the testimony of several people who were on the side of secrecy, and noted that they themselves didn’t seem to have any fear of being publicly identified. The decision also notes that much of the evidence in favor of secrecy was actually not from Washington state at all, but from California, where a somewhat similar ballot measure had been on the ballot in 2008. Finally, the judge noted that a list of people who gave money to support the referendum was already public knowledge, and it didn’t seem that people who had given money for the referendum had been harassed. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Americans Elect has filed preliminary paperwork to begin petition drives in North Carolina and Oklahoma, two of the most difficult states in the nation for minor parties to get on the ballot for President. On October 3, Americans Elect notified the Oklahoma State Election Board that it is about to start the party petition in that state, which requires 51,739 valid signatures. And on October 12, Americans Elect submitted a sample petition to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, so that the Board can check that the form is proper. The North Carolina drive will need 85,379 valid signatures.
Other unqualified parties that have notified the Oklahoma State Election Board that they intend to attempt to qualify for the ballot are the Libertarian, Constitution, and Pirate Parties. As far as is known, the only other party is petitioning in North Carolina is the Constitution Party. The Libertarian Party is already on the North Carolina ballot for 2012.
The only truly difficult petition drives that Americans Elect hasn’t started yet are the Texas and Indiana drives. Texas law does not permit the petition to circulate until after the March 2012 primary. Indiana’s only ballot access procedure requires a stand-in presidential candidate to be listed on the form, and Americans Elect has not decided whom to list as the stand-in.