On February 11, the Florida Libertarian convention included a debate among several candidates seeking the Libertarian Party nomination, and also a straw poll afterwards. This MSNBC story covers the event. As the article notes, Gary Johnson won the straw poll.
The article has a factual error. It says the Libertarian Party has never exceeded 1% of the presidential vote, but in 1980 the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, Ed Clark, exceeded 1%. He got 1.065%.
Patrick McEwen of The Capital Free Press (from Madison, Wisconsin) has this detailed analysis of how the complicated presidential primary ballot access laws of some states have injured the Rick Santorum campaign. It isn’t so much that Santorum’s name is missing from that many state presidential primary ballots, but that some states have separate petition requirements for delegates, and Santorum is not fielding full slates of delegates in quite a few states.
Also, as the analysis makes clear, Santorum himself is not on the ballot in Virginia and may not be on the Indiana ballot.
Virginia permits stand-in presidential and vice-presidential candidates on the petitions of unqualified parties. The Virginia Green Party wants to start early, so it has printed up petitions listing Jill Stein for President, and Howie Hawkins for Vice-President. Hawkins has not said he wants the Green Party vice-presidential nomination, but he consented to be listed at least as a stand-in.
The Green Party won’t know who it will be running until its national convention in Baltimore, July 13-15.
On February 10, the Connecticut Secretary of State announced that Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum are on the ballot automatically for the April 24 Republican presidential primary. The Connecticut law says the Secretary of State is supposed to list candidates if “the candidacy of such person for such party’s nomination for president is generally and seriously advocated or recognized according to reports in the national or state news media.”
California and many other states have similar laws, but in California, the Secretary of State recognized Buddy Roemer and Fred Karger as Republican presidential candidates who meet the media test. The difference between the Connecticut list, and the California list, shows how arbitrary these “media” laws are.
This Connecticut news story says that Buddy Roemer asked to be included on the Connecticut ballot, and that his communication was 40 minutes too late. However, nothing in the Connecticut law says or implies that a candidate needs to communicate with the Secretary of State. Also, the reporter seemed to have accepted the Secretary of State’s claim that anyone not included should have no trouble completing the alternate petition procedure, which requires the signatures of 1% of a party’s registrants. In reality that alternative procedure is so difficult, no one in Connecticut has ever completed it. Unlike the Virginia and Indiana presidential primary petitions, the Connecticut petitions can only be signed by registered members of the party, and the time to obtain the signatures is very short. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
Although there have been many stories about Americans Elect over the last year, this Billings Gazette story is unusual, because it focuses on one individual who was not involved in founding Americans Elect, but who became very interested in the group and is now the Delegate Leader for his state, Montana. He is Mark Higgins, and he first got active in politics fighting for medical marijuana to be distributed legally.
Higgins lives in Roundup, Montana, a small town near the geographical center of the state.
