The First Circuit will hear Barr v Galvin, 09-2426, on September 15, at 9:30 a.m.  This is the case on whether the Massachusetts Libertarian Party had a right to use a stand-in presidential nominee on its 2008 petition, and then the ability to substitute the actual nominee for the stand-in nominee.

The U.S. District Court had ruled in favor of the Libertarian Party before the election.  Massachusetts is trying to persuade the First Circuit to reverse the ruling.

Jurisdictions which permit unqualified parties to use stand-in presidential candidates on petitions, and then substitute the actual presidential nominee, are Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.  States that don’t permit it are Alabama, Maine, and New Hampshire.  The issue doesn’t arise in most states, either because the party petition is just as easy (or easier) than the candidate petition, or else because the candidate petition is so easy and due so late in the process that even a minor party that doesn’t nominate its presidential candidate until August can use it.  A “party petition” is a petition to transform a group into a qualified party, and which doesn’t bear the names of any candidates.

All states permit qualified parties to substitute a new nominee when the original nominee withdraws from the presidential or vice-presidential race.  For instance, all states let the Democratic Party substitute for vice-president in 1972, to replace Thomas Eagleton.  Eagleton had been nominated at the July 1972 convention but he withdrew in August 1972 and the Democratic National Committee chose R. Sargent Shriver to replace him.

Ohio has a peculiar system for choosing state judges, including members of the State Supreme Court.  They are nominated in partisan primaries.  Then they run in the general election but no party labels are on the November ballot.  The August 14 issue of the Toledo Blade has this editorial, saying if the state continues to nominate judicial candidates in partisan primaries, then party labels should be on the general election ballot.

However, the editorial also advocates that Ohio stop electing judges.  As the editorial notes, the Democratic Party and others have a pending federal lawsuit, arguing that because Ohio prints partisan labels on the November ballot for other partisan office, the state cannot withhold partisan labels for judicial nominees in the general election.

On August 13, a U.S. District Court Judge in Kansas struck down the law requiring circulators to be residents of Kansas.  Constitution Party of Kansas v Biggs, 10-4043.  This outcome was no surprise, because on July 23, the Attorney General and the attorney for the Constitution Party had filed a joint brief, arguing that the law is unconstitutional.

Kansas is in the 10th circuit, and the 10th circuit had ruled in 2008 that residency requirements for circulators are unconstitutional.  See this story about the lawsuit.  The list of states (in the newspaper story) that ban out-of-state circulators is not accurate.  In some of the states on the list, the ban on out-of-state circulators has already been struck down.

The other half of the lawsuit is not settled yet.  It concerns the state’s ban on voters registering into a party that is not ballot-qualified.  The case law in the 10th circuit on that issue is also good, but Kansas is not willing to concede that point.  The Constitution Party is not ballot-qualified but some Kansas voters would like to register as members of the party.  Similar lawsuits have won in New Jersey, New York, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Colorado.  However, relief in some of these cases has been limited to unqualified parties that do place their nominees on the November ballot.  In Kansas, the Constitution Party has twice placed its presidential nominee on the ballot even while it was not a qualified party.