On December 14, Americans Elect submitted its petition for full party status in Rhode Island. The state requires 17,115 valid signatures, and Americans Elect submitted 33,000. Americans Elect is only the second group to have used the Rhode Island party petition procedure. The first group to do so was the Moderate Party, which did its petition in 2009.

The party petition procedure has only existed in Rhode Island since 1994. Before 1994, Rhode Island did not have any procedure for a group to transform itself into a qualified party in advance of any particular election. Instead, all it could do was submit a candidate petition, and only if that candidate polled at least 5% for Governor did the group become a qualified party. The Rhode Island ACLU and the Rhode Island Secretary of State worked together in 1994 to persuade the legislature to improve the law. The 1994 bill also expanded the list of offices, from just Governor, to President.

Assuming the Americans Elect petition is valid, the state will hold a primary for it in 2012, for all partisan office, and anyone in Rhode Island will be permitted to run for any partisan office in the party’s primary. The Rhode Island primary (for office other than President) is September 11, 2012.

Independent Political Report says Gary Johnson will officially declare that he has become a registered Libertarian, and that he will seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, on December 15. See here. The report has already been picked up by Political Wire.

On December 14, Johnson, in a speech, mentioned that in 1995, Newt Gingrich introduced a bill providing for the death penalty for anyone who transported as little as eight ounces of an illegal drug (including marijuana) into the United States.

Also on December 14, some news reports said that the Michigan Secretary of State had refused to let Gary Johnson withdraw from the Republican presidential primary ballot, and that this might make it impossible for him to be the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee. The Michigan law does not interfere with the Libertarian Party’s right to nominate Gary Johnson in that state, even though his name remains on the Republican presidential primary ballot. The Michigan law covers independents, and clearly does not refer to presidential primary candidates, because it refers to candidates who applied for a place on a primary ballot by petition or filing fee. Johnson did not apply to be on the Michigan Republican primary ballot. He was listed automatically because he had been discussed in the news media earlier as someone seeking the Republican nomination. Michigan, like certain other states, lists presidential primary candidates automatically, without any input from them. The Secretary of State refused his request to withdraw because the withdrawal form forces the candidate to say he is not running for President.

Americans Elect submitted over 1,630,000 signatures earlier this year, to meet a requirement of 1,030,080 valid signatures. The California Secretary of State’s web page has this chart, showing which counties have finished checking the signatures. Los Angeles and San Diego, two of the most three populous counties, have now finished checking the petition. Only fifteen counties still haven’t finished. So far the petition-checking process shows a validity rate of 67.75%, and Americans Elect only needs to have 63.2% valid in order to succeed.