On August 21, the Ohio Secretary of State said his office has determined that four independent presidential petitions have enough valid signatures, and two do not.

The two that do not are for Claudia De la Cruz and Shiva Ayyadurai.  Probably De la Cruz would have had enough, except that some of the petition sheets didn’t have a copy of the declaration of candidacy attached.  Ohio is believed to be the only state that requires petitions to include a copy of the declaration.

The four that have enough are for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jill Stein, Peter Sonski, and Richard Duncan.  This is the first time an American Solidarity Party presidential candidate has qualified in Ohio, and represents the most difficult petition drive the party has completed in its history.  The requirement is 5,000 signatures.

Richard Duncan is an Ohio resident who has run for president in his home state several times before, but he generally doesn’t petition in any other state.

The qualified parties in Ohio are Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian.

On August 20, Alaska held its top-four primary.  The only statewide race on the ballot was U.S. House, where neither of the minor party candidates placed in the top four, although the Alaskan Independence Party candidate placed fifth and could conceivably qualify once all the votes are counted.  The other minor party candidate in that race was Richard Grayson, running with the “No Labels” label.

In the state legislative races, only one race had more than four candidates running, so except in that one race (the 36th House race), no one was excluded from the general election ballot.

Scott Kohlhaas, long-time Libertarian activist, running for State House, 20th district, in a two-person race against a Democrat.  Kohlhaas polled 32.5%.

Here is a link to the results.

On August 20, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled against the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which had petitioned in Pennsylvania to get on the ballot for president.  In re Nomination Petition of Claudia De la Cruz, Commonwealth Court, 380 MD 2024.

Some of the party’s candidates for presidential elector were registered Democrats, and the law requires candidates who petition for the general election under the independent procedure not be members of a qualified party.  However, the party argued that even if some of its elector candidates were not eligible, there is no law that requires a presidential candidate to have a full slate of electors.

The court said Article II of the U.S. Constitution requires presidential candidates to have a full slate of electors, but that does not follow logically at all.  The Commonwealth Court did not mention the evidence that in the past, Pennsylvania has permitted minor party presidential candidates to be on the ballot even though they did not have a full slate of electors.  The Commonwealth Court did not mention a New York precedent from 1968, Application of Horowitz, that came to the opposite conclusion.

The Court could have taken judicial notice that there isn’t a one-in-million chance that Claudia De la Cruz would have carried Pennsylvania in November, so there is no harm done if she doesn’t have a full slate of electors.  In the past, in many if not most states, it was common for parties that did not expect to win the election to have an incomplete slate of electors.  In Minnesota, before the 1960’s, the state required a separate petition for each candidate for presidential elector, so even powerful minor parties typically ran only a single candidate for presidential elector, to save the bother of circulating multiple petitions.

Here is the decision.  It says near the beginning that the requirement for all statewide candidates is 5,000, which is good news, because some of the objectors have been claiming that the requirement is 5,000 only for the Green, Constitution and Libertarian Parties.