On Sunday, July 21, President Joe Biden said he will not run for re-election. This development shows the wisdom of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983 when it issued its decision in Anderson v Celebrezze. The Court struck down early petition deadlines for independent presidential candidates, and based its decision on history. The decision says unexpected events do happen sometimes, and the voters must be given a chance to react, with support for new candidates.
The agreement between the national committee of the Libertarian Party, and the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. campaign to cooperate on fundraising, is illustrated by this tweet.
Federal campaign law lets individuals donate considerably more to a national committee of a party, than to any candidate for federal office. The deal provides that individuals who have already given the maximum amount to Kennedy can now also donate to the Libertarian Party. Then, the Libertarian Party contributes 90% of that amount to the Kennedy campaign. So both campaigns benefit. This sort of arrangement would not be needed if there were fewer campaign finance limits, or if the federal limits were non-discriminatory.
David Larson, opinion editor of Carolina Journal, has this column criticizing the Democratic members of the North Carolina State Board of Elections for their obviously partisan bias when they make decisions about ballot access.
The Alaska Division of Elections will soon determine whether the initiative to repeal the top-four system has enough valid signatures. There are enough valid signatures statewide, but Alaska also requires a minimum number of signatures in three-fourths of the legislative districts, and the initiative may not have complied with the distribution requirement. See this story.
On July 19 a state court judge ruled that about 3,000 signatures are not valid, because the voters who signed them did so when no circulator was present. The petition blanks had been left on various bulletin boards and other places where no one was watching voters sign.
The Detroit News has this interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He says that the Democratic Party made a mistake when it blocked primary season debates in its presidential selection process.
