Kathleen Curry, Colorado’s only independent state legislator, has opened a campaign office and has also submitted a petition to be on the November ballot as an independent candidate, in the 61st House district.

Whether she is on the ballot as an independent, or must run as a write-in, she is campaigning. She won’t know whether she is on the ballot until a U.S. District Court judge rules in the lawsuit over Colorado’s law on how soon independent candidates must have left their party. Curry left the Democratic Party last year to become an independent. If the law that will be in effect next year were in effect now, she would be on as an independent. But the law in effect this year does not allow her to be on the ballot because she left the Democratic Party too late; she should have left by June 2009.

Her campaign headquarters is at 54542 US Highway 50, Gunnison. No one has been elected to a state legislature as a write-in candidate, anywhere in the United States, at a general election, since 2006, when Massachusetts write-in candidate Pam Richardson was elected in the Middlesex 6 House district.

Curry will have two general election opponents, Democrat Roger Wilson, and Republican Luke Korkowski.

The June 11 issue of the Dallas Morning News has this interview with Kat Swift, director of the Texas Green Party. Swift did an excellent job. It’s especially valuable that she mentioned that before 1967, Texas did not require any petition whatsoever for a minor party to be on the ballot, and yet Texas never had more than six parties on a government-printed ballot.

The June 13 Washington Post has this analysis by Dan Balz, saying the voters are angrier than usual and that makes the election more difficult to predict. He did not discuss minor party or independent candidates.

It seems likely that every state will have minor party or independent candidates on the November 2010 ballot for Congress, except New Mexico and Washington. Washington’s “top-two” system will almost certainly confine the November ballot to only Democrats and Republicans, just as it did in 2008, the first time it was used in that state.