The American Independent Party of California will choose a presidential nominee on August 11, in Sacramento. The meeting will be at Perkos Restaurant at 925 Third Street, at the corner of J Street. The Saturday session starts at 9:30 a.m. and is set to last until 5 p.m. There are also proceedings at the same location on Friday evening, August 10.
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.
U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter will hear arguments in Delegates to the Republican National Convention v Republican National Committee on August 6, at 8:30 a.m., in the federal courthouse in Santa Ana, California (case number 8:12-cv-927). This is the lawsuit filed by 119 Republican national convention delegates who charge that the Republican national presidential convention process is flawed. The Republican National Committee has filed a motion to dismiss the case. The Republican National Committee is also arguing that a great deal of evidence submitted by the plaintiffs should be rejected, because it was filed late and some of it wasn’t properly served on the defendant.
The overwhelming majority of plaintiffs are Ron Paul delegates. The plaintiffs also include some voters and other individuals who are not delegates.
On July 25, attorneys for the Pennsyvlania elections office filed a brief in Constitution Party v Aichele, the case filed by the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties over the unique Pennsylvania system that puts petitioning groups at risk of paying court costs of up to $110,000 if their petitions are found insufficient. The state’s brief says the parties don’t have standing to challenge the system. The case is in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, 5:12-cv-2726.
This U.S. News & World Report story says that Janet Brown, veteran director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, is very aware of the campaign to get Gary Johnson included in the presidential debates. The headline of the US News & World Report story is misleading. The real substance is that reporters now know that the Commission is aware of unhappiness with the process, which not only requires that Johnson receive 15% in public opinion polls, but that most polls don’t even include him.
