On June 21, the Moderate Party, a ballot-qualified party in Rhode Island, filed a federal lawsuit called Moderate Party of Rhode Island v Lynch.  Here is the complaint.  The number has not been assigned yet.

The case challenges the discriminatory aspect of the law that determines which qualified parties may receive money from the fund that gets its money from a voluntary question on state income tax forms.   Only parties that polled 5% of the gubernatorial vote in the last midterm election may be listed.  There are two other methods by which a party may be a ballot-qualified party, either submitting a petition of 5% of the last gubernatorial vote, or having polled 5% for President at the last presidential election.  When the definition of “political party” was expanded in 1994, the legislature didn’t think to expand the definition in the part of the Rhode Island code that affects the state income tax listing.

Twenty candidates filed to run in the Florida Tea Party primary for state legislative races. This story says that some of the candidates are, or have recently been, registered Democrats. The story also quotes Republican Party officials as saying that they suspect the motivations of some of these candidates were to injure Republican nominees.

In 2008, it appears that all five Green Party legislative candidates were not bona fide Greens, but individuals who were motivated to run by Republican political consultants. The lawsuit filed in 2008 to find out who paid the filing fees for these Green Party candidates is still going on. However, in all five districts in 2008 that had Green Party nominees, the vote margin between the two major parties was such that the winner won with an absolute majority of the vote.

On March 2, 2010, Texas held its partisan primaries. Kesha Rogers won the Democratic primary for U.S. House, 22nd district. See this story. She is part of Lyndon LaRouche’s organization.

The LaRouche organization has participated in Democratic primaries ever since 1980. This is not the first time a LaRouche supporter has won a Democratic U.S. House primary. However, it is the first time in over a decade.

LaRouche himself ran in Democratic presidential primaries in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004.