On October 13, the Republican, Libertarian, and Reform Party nominees for Governor of Kansas will debate each other on radio. The Democratic nominee refuses to participate. See this story.
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On September 13, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Bert Pexsa should remain on the November ballot. He is the Independence Party nominee for State House of Representatives, district 11B. When he filed his declaration of candidacy, he accidentally wrote “Independent Party” instead of “Independence Party.” A Republican filed a lawsuit against the Douglas County Auditor, charging that the Auditor should not have placed Pexsa on the ballot because of the error. But the State Supreme Court disagreed. See this story. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link. The case is Clark v Reddick, A101527.
A CBS News Poll finds that 54% of Americans say the U.S. needs a new political party, whereas 42% say two parties is enough. See this story. Read down toward the bottom.
Also, the Wall Street Journal has this article by Rhodes Cook, who mulls over the possibility that 2012 will bring a strong general election presidential candidate who is not the nominee of either the Democratic nor Republican Parties. Ironically, Cook refers to a poll earlier this year on whether the U.S. needs a new major party, when the percentage of people who said “yes” was somewhere between 40% and 50%. As the top paragraph in this post shows, that statistic is now out of date. Thanks to ThirdPartyDaily for the link.
On September 16, a U.S. District Court in Rhode Island refused to enjoin use of the state’s “straight-ticket” device on general election ballots. Lusi v Mollis, 10-350. The decision was not surprising, because the same judge had denied relief on September 1 in another case that was virtually identical. That case was Healey v State, 10-316.
Straight-ticket devices injure independent candidates, because they permit a voter to cast a vote on all partisan races without even looking at the ballot to see who is running. And, independent candidates never have their own straight-ticket device. See this story.
On September 10, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema heard arguments in Libertarian Party of Virginia v Virginia State Board of Elections, 1:10-cv-615, eastern district. The issue is whether Virginia may require all petition circulators for U.S. House candidates to be residents of the district. In this case, the petitioner is the candidate himself, Matt Mosley. He doesn’t live in the 8th district, but that is the district he is running in. The U.S. Constitution does not require candidates for U.S. House to live in the district they are seeking to represent.
A similar Virginia case, before another judge, already lost in U.S. District Court in a different division of the eastern district. That case is Lux v Rodrigues. That case also involves a candidate who circulated his own petition, and in which all those signatures were disqualified because the candidate, Herb Lux, doesn’t live in the district he hopes to represent. That case is already before the 4th circuit, Lux v Rodrigues, 10-1997. On September 15, the 4th circuit refused to order the State Board of Elections to check the Lux petition to see if it was actually signed by as many as 1,000 registered voters (the legal requirement for U.S. House candidates in Virginia is 1,000 signatures). The 4th circuit order is not signed by any particular judge and has no text explaining the basis for the denial.