On November 23, the Eighth Circuit refused to rehear Libertarian Party of North Dakota v Jaeger, 10-3212, and also refused to amend its original October 2011 opinion, which erroneously said that when a party submits 7,000 valid signatures, it remains ballot-qualified indefinitely afterwards. The October 2011 decision had said North Dakota needs a primary vote test for minor party candidates, because otherwise the ballot would become too crowded because there is no other ballot access barrier. In truth, a party that submits 7,000 signatures is only on the ballot for one election, and it is then removed from the ballot unless it polled 5% for Governor or President (if the last election was a presidential election year) or Secretary of State (if the last election was a midterm year).

It is very odd for a court to fail to fix a factual error, when the factual error is pointed out in a rehearing request. Generally the panel denies rehearing, but issues an amended opinion fixing the error.

Ballotpedia has this article, with data on how much it cost to put 2010 initiatives on the statewide ballot of all the states that had statewide initiatives that year. The average cost to get an initiative on 2010 ballots was $3.29 per required signatures. Although 49 statewide initiatives qualified in 2010, only four of them got on the ballot without hiring a petition management company.

ABC News has this story about the 2012 presidential election, and alternatives to the two major parties. Like many other stories, this story quotes an authority who says that if someone were elected President who wasn’t the nominee of either of the two major parties, that person would not be able to work with Congress. In this case the quoted authority is Professor Jonathan Ladd.

It is surprising that people who make this point never seem to remember that the U.S. has had six minor party or independent Governors elected in the last 40 years (two in Maine, and one each in Minnesota, Alaska, Connecticut, and Rhode Island), and that these Governors did work with their state legislatures and did get things done.