On September 16, the New York State Board of Elections met and determined whether various petitions for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, should be determined valid.  In New York, the Board disqualifies such petitions even if no one challenges, if the petitions on their face lack any possibility of containing enough valid signatures.

The only statewide petition invalidated by the Board was the petition of Sam Sloan, who is a Libertarian but who is not the party’s nominee.  He had nevertheless submitted a petition with his own name and the party label “Libertarian”, but it did not contain 15,000 signatures.

Therefore, these parties will be on the ballot for statewide office:  the five qualified parties (Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative, Working Families), followed by these parties:  Anti-Prohibition, Freedom, Green, Libertarian, Rent is 2 Damn High, Tea, and Taxpayers.  Although the Taxpayers Party is on the ballot now, a lawsuit is pending on whether that petition is valid.  The Taxpayers nominee for Governor is Carl Paladino, who is also the Republican nominee.

The Tea Party gubernatorial nominee is Steven Cohn, an attorney from Long Island.  His petition had been challenged by allies of Carl Paladino, but the Tea Party petition survived.  Cohn is supported by Bobby Kumar, who has been active in the Independence Party and who briefly held himself out last year as national chair of the Reform Party.

The Freedom Party gubernatorial nominee is Charles Barron, who is angry with the Democratic Party because all six of the Democratic Party’s statewide nominees this year are non-Hispanic whites.

In 2006, when New York last held a gubernatorial election, nine parties had statewide nominees.  When there are more than eight parties, New York puts two parties in the same party column.  In 2006, the Rent is Too Damn High Party and the Socialist Workers Party were squeezed into the same column.  This year, all six or seven of the unqualified parties will be squeezed into columns that contain two parties.  If there are twelve parties on the ballot, that will be the most crowded general election for statewide office in New York’s history.  However, even if there are twelve parties on, there would only be nine gubernatorial candidates on, because the Independence and Working Families Parties are cross-endorsing the Democratic nominee, and the Taxpayers Party is cross-endorsing the Republican nominee.

The District of Columbia Board of Elections has now tabulated the write-in vote from the September 14 primary.  No one had appeared on the Republican primary ballot for Mayor of Washington.  However, incumbent Democratic Mayor Adrian Fenty received enough write-in votes in the Republican primary, so that he may become the Republican nominee, if he accepts the nomination.  He must decide by close of business, September 17;and if he accepts, he must change his registration from “Democratic” to “Republican.”  Here is the Board’s tabulation.  Write-in candidates also received enough votes in the Republican primary for two other partisan District offices.  Thanks to Political Wire for the link.  UPDATE:  this story says D.C. election law would not allow Fenty to accept the Republican nomination, because he would have switched parties too late.  However, he could still be a write-in candidate in the November election.

The Mayor, who had been running for re-election, had lost the Democratic nomination on September 14.  He had been elected as a Democrat in 2006.

There is still no decision in the lawsuit filed last year, to force the Board of Elections to count the write-in votes for Bob Barr in the 2008 presidential election.

Earlier this year, the Vermont legislature moved the independent candidate petition deadline from September to June.  On August 25, an independent candidate for the U.S. House, Jerry Trudell, filed a lawsuit in state court, alleging that the new deadline is unconstitutional.  He had submitted his petition a few days before the primary, but the state had refused to accept it, because it was too late.  Vermont held its primary this year on August 24.

On September 15, the state filed its brief in Trudell’s lawsuit, defending the law and asking that the lawsuit be dismissed.  The case is Trudell v Markowitz, Washington County Superior Court, 612-8-10-WN-cv.

Courts have struck down independent candidate petition deadlines (for office other than President), if the deadline was earlier than the primary, in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  The Arkansas decision was summarily affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Also, independent presidential candidates won deadline lawsuits against petition deadlines in Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Carolina, and the state legislatures in those states interpreted those decisions to mean that the old deadline was unconstitutional for all independent candidates, not just presidential independent candidates, and improved the deadlines for all independent candidates.

There are no court precedents upholding a state law that sets the petition deadline for independent candidates before the primary (or the day before the primary), except for a strange 1994 decision from the 9th circuit, concerning Washington state, in which none of the plaintiff-candidates had been harmed by the deadline complained about.  There had been a 1986 precedent from the 7th circuit upholding such an early deadline, but in 2006 the 7th circuit had overruled that old decision.