On July 5, the Federal Election Commission announced that Gary Johnson is about to receive a second check for primary season matching funds. The second check is for $130,059. The first one had been for $100,000. See this story.
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The Georgia Green Party is working to place Kwabena Nkromo on the November ballot for the State House, 57th district. If the petition succeeds, it will be the first time the party has placed a nominee on the general election ballot, in a regularly-scheduled election, for any state or federal office in Georgia. The party has in the past been on the ballot for local partisan office.
Nkromo needs approximately 1,500 valid signature by August 6. He has been petitioning for the last two months. The 57th district is in southwest Atlanta. Assuming he gets on the ballot, he will face the winner of the Democratic primary. The two candidates in the Democratic primary, Pat Gardner and Rashad Taylor, are both incumbents. The recent redistricting placed both of them in the same district. See this story about Nkromo. The story has a small factual error; the election is on November 6, not July 31. July 31 is the date of the Democratic and Republican primaries.
On July 5, a U.S. District Court in Georgia ordered the state to accept late-arriving ballots from overseas absentee ballots. See this story.
On July 5, the Arizona deadline for submitting initiative petitions, proponents of the top-two open primary filed 365,486 signatures. The requirement is 259,213 signatures. The measure will have enough valid signatures if 71% or more of the signatures are valid.
On July 5, Wayne Stenehjem ruled that Roland Riemers may not appear on the November ballot as the Libertarian Party nominee for Governor, even though he was nominated at the party’s primary last month. North Dakota elects Governors and Lieutenant Governors jointly in November. Voters see a ticket, consisting of a candidate for Governor and for Lieutenant Governor, and voters only vote for tickets for those offices. However, in the primary, candidates for those offices run separately.
Here is the ruling. It says because no Libertarian was nominated at the party’s primary for Lieutenant Governor, the gubernatorial candidacy is not allowed. The Libertarian Party had a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, but because of a flaw in his candidacy papers, he did not appear on the primary ballot.
The ruling takes no notice that in certain other states that elect Governors and Lieutenant Governors jointly in November, but separately in the primary, parties have been permitted to run a candidate for one office without the other one. Such instances occurred in Wisconsin in 2010, and in Illinois in 1986.
As a result of this ruling, the Libertarian Party will be removed from the ballot after November 2012 unless Gary Johnson receives at least 5% of the vote. The vote test, in presidential years, applies to the presidential nominee and alternatively applies to the Gubernatorial nominee. If either gets 5%, the party remains on the ballot.