U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall is holding a hearing in Libertarian Party of Connecticut v Bysiewicz, to determine whether Bob Barr should be on the ballot. The hearing began at 11 a.m., and continued until lunch break. It will resume after lunch.
The New Hampshire Libertarian Party was a qualified party between November 1990 and November 1996. In 1997, after the party had lost its status for failing to poll 3% for Governor, the legislature boosted the vote test to 4% (for either Governor or U.S. Senator), and no party other than the Democratic and Republican Parties had been ballot-qualified since in New Hampshire.
On October 21, the Concord Monitor published polls for Governor and U.S. Senator. The poll only mentioned the two major party nominees. The results for Governor: Democrat John Lynch 60%, Republican Joe Kenney 34%, “other/undecided” 6%. For U.S. Senate: Jeanne Shaheen 50%, Republican John Sununu 43%, “other/undecided” 7%. Since the Libertarian nominees (Susan Newell for Governor and Ken Blevens for U.S. Senate) are the only other choices on the ballot, the poll tends to support the idea that either one of them, or both, may hit 4%. The Concord Monitor is very unthougthful to pay for a poll that only mentions two of the three ballot-listed candidates, if the newspaper is really interested in getting high-quality poll results.
On October 22, the Massachusetts Secretary of State asked the First Circuit to reverse the injunctive relief that had been granted by a U.S. District Court on September 22, in Barr v Galvin. This is the case over whether Massachusetts was constitutionally required to let the Libertarian Party use a stand-in on its presidential petition. The appeal will not affect this year’s ballot.
Only four states (besides Massachusetts, which always had trouble making up its mind) have ever definitively refused to let unqualified parties use presidential substitution. Those states are New Hampshire, Maine, Alabama, and South Dakota. By a strange coincidence, the First Circuit includes New Hampshire and Maine. Therefore, if Massachusetts Secretary of State loses again in the First Circuit, that will have beneficial effects on New Hampshire and Maine.
The basis for allowing unqualified parties to use substitution is that all states let qualified parties use it. This was illustrated in 1972, when the Democratic National Convention chose Thomas Eagleton in July, but replaced him in August, after the original ticket had been certified to all states.
RocktheDebates leaders are tentatively planning a national conference early in 2009, on the thorny problem of how to get more inclusive general election presidential debates.
The Libertarian Party’s lawsuit to get Bob Barr on the Connecticut ballot has oral arguments on Thursday, October 23, at 11 a.m. in federal court in Bridgeport. The case is Libertarian Party of Connecticut v Bysiewicz, 3:08-cv-1513, before Judge Janet Hall. This is the first in-person hearing the case has had, even though the attorneys and the judge had previously held a status conference on the phone. It would be helpful if people who are interested in this case would attend. The U.S. Courthouse is at 915 Lafayette Boulevard in Bridgeport.
The Libertarian Party submitted enough valid signatures on the deadline, but the state says that (1) it is too late to reprint all the ballots; (2) the lawsuit is barred by the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Eleventh Amendment says people cannot sue states in federal courts. People always get around it by suing state officials, rather than the state itself. The Eleventh Amendment argument has never worked to defeat a ballot access lawsuit, in any state, ever.
The only reason that Barr isn’t already on the ballot in Connecticut is because some town clerks did a poor job of checking signatures, and invalidated signatures that were valid.
On October 25, 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court forced Cook County, Illinois, to reprint 3,000,000 ballots, because the Court felt that elections officials had erred by leaving the Harold Washington Party off the ballot. Also in 1990, Minnesota reprinted all its in-precinct ballots only a week before the general election, because the Republican nominee for Governor had resigned from the ticket and been replaced by another Republican nominee.
