The Kentucky Libertarian Party has never placed a statewide nominee on the ballot in any year, except in presidential years. To do so requires 5,000 signatures, due in early August. The only Libertarian Party nominees for U.S. Senate in Kentucky history have been in presidential years, when the presidential petition can include a U.S. Senate candidate as well.

Now, however, the party is considering running someone for U.S. Senate in 2010. See this story. The party disagrees with Republican nominee Rand Paul on the issue of same-sex marriage, and foreign policy, and other issues. The party is irked that the media assumes that Paul’s views match Libertarian Party views, and if the party ran its own nominee, the press would stop making that mistake.

New Jersey has procedures for recall of elected officials. Those procedures do not exclude members of Congress. On May 25, the New Jersey Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the U.S. Constitution blocks New Jersey from permitting recall of members of Congress. See this story. The case is Committee to Recall Robert Menendez v Wells, A86-09.

The lower court had ducked the issue. It failed to decide that big issue, but said at least the state should let the circulators have blank petition forms. The procedure is so difficult, requiring approximately 1,300,000 valid signatures for U.S. Senate or any statewide race, that it is fundamentally unfair for the judicial system to not say whether such a petition would be honored if it were completed.

No other court has ever ruled on this interesting question, except for a lower state court in Idaho in 1967 that said the U.S. Constitution does not permit the states to have procedures for recall of members of Congress.

The prestigious blog www.fivethirtyeight.com, has this article, “Might this be a good time for Instant Runoff Voting?” The article is a reaction to the May 22 special congressional election in Hawaii, at which a Republican was elected with less than 40% of the total vote cast. Thanks to Peter Gemma for the link.