On October 7, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Bob Barr’s application for a place on the Louisiana ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court has not granted an injunction, putting anyone on a ballot, since October 1990, when it ordered Cook County, Illinois, to put the Harold Washington Party on the ballot for county office.
The Georgia Libertarian Party is running John Monds for Public Service Commission. This is a partisan statewide race. Monds has no Democratic opponent. The only candidate besides Monds is the incumbent Commissioner, H. Doug Everett, the Republican nominee. This will be the first 2-way statewide race that a Georgia Libertarian has been in since 1994, when Sharon Harris was one of only two candidates for Agriculture Commissioner. Harris received 301,416 votes, or 22.6%. 1994 was a low turnout year in Georgia. If Monds gets the same percentage that Harris got, and if Georgia has a turnout in 2008 that is no higher than the 2004 turnout of 3,300,000, then Monds will get 750,000 votes.
On October 6, the Ninth Circuit ruled against the Alaskan Independence Party, in the party’s attempt to keep Daniel DeNardo from running in its primary for public office. The case will go down in history with the wrong party name, because the U.S. District Court erroneously misstated the party’s name in its opinion, and the error was carried forward in the briefs submitted to the 9th circuit. The actual name of the party is Alaskan Independence Party, but the case will be reported as Alaska Independence Party v State, unless anyone asks the Court to correct the caption. 07-35186.
The Ninth Circuit opinion is here. The opinion implies that the Alaskan Independence Party was trying to persuade the state to let it nominate by convention. This is not accurate. The party’s only goal was to win the ability to bar Daniel DeNardo from running in its primary, since he has been suing the party and its officers for slander. The real flaw in the Alaskan Independence Party’s position is that the party seemed to be contradicting its own bylaws. Its bylaws say that anyone who is a registered member of the party may run in its primary. Before the party went to court, it should have amended its bylaws so that they conform to what it was actually trying to accomplish. In this sense, this case is very similar to a recent case brought by the Mississippi Democratic Party, which sued to get a closed primary before it had set forth precise bylaws explaining exactly what it wanted. The Mississippi Democratic Party also lost its lawsuit, earlier this year.
The Alaska Libertarian Party was a co-plaintiff in the Alaskan Independence Party’s lawsuit, but the Alaska Libertarian Party had no particular concrete problem, and the briefs on both sides generally ignored the Libertarian Party’s participation in the lawsuit. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
On October 6, Survey USA released a poll for the New Hampshire U.S. Senate race. It shows: Shaheen (Dem.) 48%, Sununu (Rep.) 40%, Blevens (Libt.) 7%, undecided 5%.
If Ken Blevens polls as much as 4%, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party will once again be ballot-qualified. It was ballot qualified between November 1990 and November 1996, back when the vote test was 3%. In 1997 the New Hampshire legislature raised the vote test to 4%, but expanded the vote test so that U.S. Senate would count, instead of just Governor. In the entire history of popular elections for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, no independent or minor party candidate for U.S. Senate ever polled as much as 4%, except that Blevens himself polled 4.53% for U.S. Senate in 1996. However, the 1997 law change was written so that Blevens’ polling over 4% in 1996 did not count toward making the party ballot-qualified.
In the entire nation, the best Libertarian showing in a U.S. Senate race with both a Democrat and a Republican in the race was in 2000 in Massachusetts, when Carla Howell polled 11.9%.
As of October 6, Connecticut Libertarian activists believe they have found more than 7,500 valid signatures on the petition to put Bob Barr on the ballot. The law requires 7,500 signatures for statewide office. Earlier the state had determined that the Barr petition had fewer than 7,500 valid signatures. The evidence that there are enough valid signatures is being presented to U. S. District Court Judge Janet Hall, who is handling the case called Libertarian Party of Connecticut v Bysiewicz, 3:08cv-1513. A status conference is set for Wednesday, October 8.
