On September 7, the Arizona Green Party filed a lawsuit in federal court to require the Secretary of State to remove the names of certain Green Party nominees from the November ballot.  These nominees are people who won the Arizona Green Party primary last month, even though they have no connection with the party leadership or party activists.  The evidence seems clear that various Republicans persuaded them to file as declared write-in candidates in the Green Party primary, on the last day for filing as a declared write-in in the primary.  Because Green Party activists didn’t know about these candidacies, they were unable to counter them with rival candidates for the same office.  Here is the Complaint and here is the motion for a temporary restraining order.

The case is Arizona Green Party v Bennett, cv10-1902.  Because the Secretary of State would like the counties to print their ballots starting September 9, this case is moving very quickly and could conceivably be decided on September 8 or September 9.  UPDATE:  the case has a hearing at 1 p.m. on September 9.  The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell, a Bush Jr. appointee.

The Christian Science Monitor has this story, on whether it is good public policy to let minor party and independent candidates participate in debates with their major party opponents.  The story was triggered by a publicity campaign recently launched by Free and Equal, to expand the California gubernatorial and U.S. Senate debates from just two candidates, to all six candidates on the ballot.

The story does not mention that in the last few weeks, several U.S. House debates have been held in California, and everyone on the ballot participated.  Also there will be a U.S. House debate in which all four candidates on the ballot in California’s 6th district are invited, on September 20 in Santa Rosa.  The four candidates in that race are the nominees of the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Peace & Freedom Parties.