On August 9, the Sixth Circuit issued a 7-page order, denying the request of Tennessee election officials to remove the Green Party and the Constitution Party from the November 2012 ballot. However, the Sixth Circuit did grant the state’s request for a stay of the U.S. District Court order that said there must be a random procedure to give each party an equal chance to get the top line on the ballot.

In February 2012, a U.S. District Court in Tennessee had struck down the state’s ballot access law for newly-qualifying parties, and had also ordered the state to print the two plaintiff parties on the 2012 ballot. The U.S. District Court had also struck down the law, giving the two largest parties the best spots on the ballot.

The Sixth Circuit has not decided any of these issues at this time. Instead, the Court simply set forth what rules should be in place, pending a decision. The order says, “The state has not shown why the plaintiffs’ past support – which, as noted by the district court, consists of nearly 20,000 votes for the Green Party and almost 10,000 signatures for the Constitution Party – is so insubstantial as to create a real possibility of frustrating the State’s democratic process.” The reference to the 10,000 signatures for the Constitution Party, and the 20,000 votes for the Green Party, is to past elections, not anything related to this year’s election.

This year, Colorado will have sixteen presidential candidates listed on its ballot, the highest number of presidential candidates on a general election in U.S. history, except that Colorado also had sixteen in 2008. However, there have been many instances when states had more candidates than that on their presidential primary ballots. This post was updated on September 15 to correct some errors.

Colorado has five qualified parties, and those parties’ nominees, of course, are on the ballot automatically. They are the Democratic, Republican, Constitution, Green, and Libertarian Parties.

Then there are eleven candidates who qualified by paying the $500 fee and submitting a list of presidential elector candidates. They include four parties with “socialist” or “socialism” in their name: the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Equality Party, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The Party for Socialism and Liberation presidential candidate in Colorado is Gloria LaRiva, because the party’s actual presidential candidate, Peta Lindsey, is under age 35.

Then there are two independent presidential candidates: Jill Reed of Wyoming, and Sheila Tittle of Virginia.

Finally, there are four other minor parties: Justice Party, running Rocky Anderson; Peace & Freedom, running Roseanne Barr; Objectivist, running Tom Stevens; American Third Position, running Merlin Miller; and America’s Party, running Tom Hoefling. Thanks to William Fenwick for the Colorado list. The Colorado deadline for independent candidates, and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties, to pay their $500 was August 8.

See this story. Yet another lawsuit has been filed to remove a candidate in South Carolina from the general election ballot. One wonders if private detectives have been at work in South Carolina, searching for candidates who didn’t file the needed campaign finance forms back in March, yet who hadn’t yet been caught. Thanks to Eugene Platt for the link.