Wisconsin has four ballot-qualified parties, the Democratic, Green, Libertarian, and Republican Parties.  All qualified parties in Wisconsin nominate by primary.  Wisconsin requires just as many signatures to get someone on a primary ballot as on a general election ballot.  Statewide candidates need 2,000 signatures.  Wisconsin does not have registration by party, and any eligible voter may sign a petition to get someone on any party’s primary ballot.  Wisconsin’s primary this year is September 14.

The deadline for all petitions this year is Tuesday, July 13, at 5 p.m.  Parties must poll 1% of the November vote for any statewide race in order to remain ballot-qualified.

The Libertarian Party has been hoping to place Erick Scoglio on its own primary ballot for Governor, and Craig Mohn on its own primary for Treasurer.  The Green Party has been planning to put Pete Karas on its own primary ballot for Secretary of State.  However, activists in both parties have been slow to tackle the task of getting 2,000 signatures for their candidates, and now are having to rush to complete these primary petitions.  In Wisconsin, signatures are assumed to be valid if they have the statutory minimum number of signatures, unless someone challenges.  However, Wisconsin has very kind traditions and it is virtually unheard of for any petition to be challenged.  Also, Wisconsin permits out-of-state circulators.  Libertarians and Greens from Illinois are permitted to help with the Wisconsin petitioning, and will probably be doing so this coming weekend.

In 2006, the formerly ballot-qualified Constitution Party failed to place any statewide candidates on its own primary ballot, and the party lost its status as a qualified party, because obviously it couldn’t poll 1% of the November vote for any of its statewide nominees when it didn’t have any statewide nominees on the November ballot.  The Constitution Party has not recovered its status in Wisconsin.  A petition to create a new ballot-qualified party requires 10,000 signatures.

The Conservative Party, a fairly new nationally-organized party, will hold its first national convention in New Orleans on July 22-24.  Emphasis will be on writing the party’s platform.  See the party’s web page here for more information.  The convention will be at Loew’s New Orleans Hotel.

Mary Norwood, independent candidate for Chair of the Fulton County, Georgia Commission, plans to submit more than 44,000 valid signatures on the petition deadline, July 13.  She also plans to sue to overturn the law that says an independent candidate must file a declaration of candidacy several weeks before the petition itself is due.

The Georgia primary is July 20, and the run-off primary is August 10.  Independent candidates, of course, do not run in partisan primaries.

Courts that have ruled that independent candidate deadlines cannot be earlier than the primary (or the day before the primary) included the US Courts of Appeals in the 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 11th circuits, and also U.S. District Courts and state courts in certain states that are not in those circuits, namely Alaska, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, and Ohio.  Georgia is in the 11th circuit.  The 11th circuit case that struck down an early petition deadline for independent candidates is New Alliance Party of Alabama v Hand, 933 F 2d 1568 (1991).  Norwood does not plan to contest the petition deadline of July 13, just the July 2 deadline for paying the filing fee.

Georgia is one of only five states that requires an independent candidate to file a declaration of candidacy in advance of actually submitting the petition.  The others are Kentucky (but only candidates for state office, not federal office), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Texas.  West Virginia formerly had such a law but it was repealed in 2009.  South Carolina formerly had such a law but it was invalidated in Cromer v State in 1990.