On August 14, Herb Hoffman, independent candidate for U.S. Senate from Maine, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to keep him on the ballot. Everyone agrees that more than 4,000 registered voters signed his petition to put him on the ballot, and that the petition was submitted on time. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court had removed him from the ballot because three people had testified that Hoffman had signed off on the petition sheets they signed (as the witness) but he wasn’t really watching. Hoffman didn’t need those 3 signatures, but the Maine Supreme Judicial Court had invalidated all the signatures from those three petition sheets.

Hoffman has an excellent attorney, but he still faces long odds. The U.S. Supreme Court has not intervened to put any candidate on the ballot since October 1990, when it ordered Cook County, Illinois, to put the Harold Washington Party on the ballot for county office. The U.S. Supreme Court denied all of Ralph Nader’s requests for injunctions in 2004. Hoffman is the first person since 2004 to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to issue injunctive relief.

On August 12, the South Carolina Secretary of State, and the South Carolina Election Commission, jointly agreed that if two different parties jointly nominate the same presidential candidate and the same slate of presidential elector candidates, that the state will add the votes together (from both parties) to determine the candidate’s vote total.

This may seem as though it should have been obvious all along. The other fusion states certainly considered it obvious, but South Carolina had been equivocating this year, about that point.

The Peace Party has submitted a petition to be recognized as a party in Oregon. Press reports are that the group’s margin of raw signatures over the 20,000 requirement is somewhat slim. The Secretary of State has until the end of August to verify the signatures.

Some observers in Oregon have jumped to the conclusion that the Peace Party is Ralph Nader’s vehicle for obtaining ballot access in that state. However, those conclusions seem inaccurate. It is more likely that the Independent Party of Oregon will nominate Nader.