On August 2, the Maine Secretary of State said the independent presidential petition for Cornel West has enough valid signatures.
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On August 1, the New Jersey Democratic Party asked the New Jersey Secretary of State to remove Shiva Ayyadurai from the ballot. He is an independent presidential candidate with the ballot label “Dr. Shiva.” He was not born in the United States. See this story.
As already noted, New Jersey has traditionally not enforced presidential qualifications, and has printed the names of six minor party and independent presidential or vice-presidential candidates who were under age 35, or who were not born in the United States.
On August 1, the Colorado Secretary of State said the independent presidential petition for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has enough valid signatures.
The number of signatures needed for someone running for president outside the major parties in 2024 is substantially more difficult than it had been in 2020. That is partly because legislatures increased the number of signatures, and partly because some states temporarily decreased their requirements in 2020 because of the covid health crisis.
Using the easier method in each state, the number nationwide in 2020 had been 568,689 signatures or registrants, and in 2024 it is 660,897.
The states that increased the presidential petition requirements were New York in 2020, and Arkansas, Colorado, and Iowa in 2021. Certain other states also increased requirements for office other than president.
Jurisdictions that temporarily eased the presidential petition requirements in 2020 due to covid were the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Virginia. Also New York increased the permanent requirement in 2020 to 45,000, but then lowered it only for 2020 to 30,000.
The calculation assumes that the easier method in California is the independent presidential petition, not the registration method that creates a new party. However, both methods are extremely burdensome, and it is a close call. In 2024 the independent petition is 219,403 signatures and the party registration method is approximately 75,000 party members. The exact requirement for the registration method won’t be known for several weeks, when the state issues a new Report of Registration.
Ross Perot in 1992 collected more signatures than any presidential candidate in history. He used the independent petition method in every state except in Oregon, even though the signature burden on him would have been lighter if he had formed new one-state parties in certain states. Also he did not accept the nomination of any pre-existing ballot-qualified party in 1992. Also, back in 1992, the ballot access laws for presidential candidates running outside the major parties were more severe than they are today.
On July 31, the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. held a press conference about ballot access, and asserted that he had collected over 1,000,000 signatures, a record. The claim that this is a record is not true, because of the Perot example. It is also that Lenora Fulani in 1988, John Anderson in 1980, and George Wallace in 1968 collected more than 1,000,000.
See this statement from the Kennedy campaign. Kennedy did not need to collect any signatures in California or Florida, because ballot-qualified parties that themselves didn’t need any signatures nominated him. Also he needed fewer signatures than Ross Perot needed in 1992, because of easier requirements now than in 1992, in Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wyoming.