Montana’s primary in 2012 is on June 5. Parties entitled to nominate by primary are the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Americans Elect Parties. When filing closed for this year’s primary, two Libertarians had filed to run for U.S. Senate in the Libertarian Party.

On March 20, Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch ruled that the Libertarian Party may not have a primary this year, and that she will print the names of both Libertarians on the November ballot. She made this decision, based on section 13-10-209(2). Before 2005, that section said, “It is not necessary to print a primary ballot for a political party which does not have candidates for more than half of the offices on the ballot in even-year elections if no more than one candidate files for nomination by that party for any of the offices on the ballot.”

In 2005, that section was amended to say, “An election administrator does not need to prepare a primary ballot for a political party if: (a) the party does not have candidates for more than half of the offices to appear on the ballot; or (b) no more than one candidate files for nomination by that party for any of the offices to appear on the ballot.”

Some Montana Libertarians have suggested that the Secretary of State allow the party to nominate a candidate for U.S. Senate by convention, but the Secretary of State rejected that idea. This year the Libertarian Party does have candidates for five of the nine statewide partisan races on the ballot, but it does not have candidates for a majority of legislative races. Montana does permit write-ins in primaries. The Secretary of State says it would cost $380,000 to print Libertarian primary ballots. Because Montana doesn’t have registration by party, election officials can’t know how many voters would request a Libertarian primary ballot, so election officials say they would need to print as many Libertarian primary ballots as are printed for the major parties. See this story.

Here is a link to the CNN site for Illinois’ Republican presidential primary. The turnout is rather low. In the Illinois 2008 presidential primaries, there were 899,422 votes cast for Republican presidential candidates; 2,038,614 for Democratic presidential candidates; and 2,672 for Green Party presidential candidates. These total 2,940,708.

By comparison, with 99% of the vote counted in 2012, there are 907,919 votes counted for Republican presidential candidates, and fewer than 600,000 for President Obama, who was unopposed in the Democratic presidential primary.

On March 20, Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit in Leon County, Florida Circuit Court. The case is Voeltz v Obama. Another defendant is Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner. The lawsuit urges the state to keep President Obama off the November 2012 ballot on the grounds that he does not meet the constitutional qualifications. The complaint argues that “natural-born citizen” means the child of an adult U.S. citizen, and also disputes the authenticity of the long-form birth certificate the President released last year. Here is the seven-page complaint.

Florida is one of the states that has a policy of not printing presidential candidates’ names on the general election ballot if the candidate does not meet the constitutional qualifications. For example, in 2008, the Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate, Roger Calero, did not meet the constitutional qualifications. States that nevertheless printed his name on the November 2008 ballot, or accepted him as a declared write-in candidate, are Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Washington. The Socialist Workers Party was on the ballot in Florida in 2008 but the state would not print Calero’s name, so the SWP used a stand-in, James Harris, in Florida and certain other states.