No Labels Candidate for Washington Secretary of State Polled 7.3% in August 2024 Primary

Posted on by September 24, 2024
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At the August 6, 2024 Washington state primary, Damond Townsend ran for Secretary of State with the ballot label “No Labels.” He ran against two Democrats and one Republican. He placed fourth, with 96,586 votes, 7.31%.

Because of the Washington top-two system, he won’t be on the ballot in November. But under Washington state’s old pre-top-two law, he would have been on the ballot in November. The old law said a party gained qualified status by polling 5% for any statewide race. It seems very likely that under the old law, he would have polled at least 5%, and the No Labels Party would have become ballot-qualified.

The No Labels organization, which was fiercely opposed to anyone running for any office other than President, did not take any steps to interfere with Townsend’s ballot label.

No other organized minor party ran any candidates in the Washington 2024 primary for statewide office, except that the Libertarian and Green Parties had candidates for Governor, and the Socialist Workers Party had a candidate for U.S. Senate. None of them got as much as 1%. No organized minor party had any candidates for U.S. House, except for one Green in the Second District.

New Mexico Lets Two Parties Change Their Names

Posted on by September 24, 2024
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New Mexico is one of the states that has always allowed qualified parties to change their names. Recently the New Mexico Secretary of State allowed the Libertarian Party to change its name to the Liberal Party USA. Then, shortly afterwards, she allowed the Free New Mexico Party to change its name to the Libertarian Party.

The new labels are reflected on the November 2024 ballot.

Nebraska Governor Won’t Call Special Legislative Session to Alter Electoral Vote Elections

Posted on by September 24, 2024
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On September 24, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen said he will not call a special session of the legislature to alter the way Nebraska elects presidential electors. Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that let each U.S. House district elect their own elector. The Governor wanted to covert Nebraska to the system used by the other 48 states, but he said there isn’t enough support in the legislature to make the change this year. Although the idea of switching to the system used by 48 states has a majority in the legislature, he predicts there would be a filibuster against the bill and so it couldn’t pass.

Georgia Supreme Court Likely to Rule that Independent Presidential Candidates Can’t Petition for Themselves, Only Presidential Elector Candidates Can Circulate a Petition

Posted on by September 24, 2024
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UPDATE: On September 24, the Georgia Supreme Court heard the case on whether independent presidential candidates need petitions from each candidate for presidential elector. If so, the petitions for Claudia De la Cruz and Cornel West are invalid, even though both candidates followed the advice of the Secretary of State. West v Wittenstein, S25A0178.

The oral argument went badly for the two candidates, but there is no decision yet. An earlier version of this post erroneously said the two candidates had already lost.

Some Georgia ballots have already been printed with those presidential candidates’ names on the ballot.

In the past, independent presidential candidates did petition for themselves in Georgia, and their presidential elector candidates did not petition. But the law was re-worded in 2017. The law is very murky but the plaintiff parties could not point to past practice in Georgia, because the new law is different from the old law.

The last states that required individual candidates for presidential elector to submit their own petitions were Minnesota and Wisconsin, but both states reformed their process over 70 years ago.