On July 18, the Nevada Secretary of State announced that Ralph Nader’s independent petition has enough valid signatures.
A few days before that, the Washington Secretary of State made the same announcement. Thanks to the poster below for this information.
Nader is now officially on the ballot in 6 states, a number that will sharply increase in the next few weeks, as more of his petitions are submitted and presumably verified.
Some years ago, the New York Independence Party passed a Bylaw, giving control of nomination decisions in New York city to the state party committee, instead of the local county committes within New York city. The specific nomination decisions involved were on which non-members of the party could run in the Independence Party’s primary.
Now the state committee of the Independence Party has passed another bylaw, giving state party control over counties with a population greater than 750,000, but only for districts entirely within such counties. That bylaw seems to have been passed to alter the outcome in one particular State Senate race in Nassau County (part of Long Island). See this article for the details. The move is helpful to the Republican Party in that particular district.
The July 18 USA Today has this story about the Libertarian Party’s ballot access ruling in Ohio.
Paul Jacob and two other backers of an Oklahoma initiative have a criminal case pending against them, for allegedly conspiring to hire out-of-state circulators to work in Oklahoma. The preliminary hearing in that case had been set for July 23 in state court in Oklahoma City, but it has now been postponed. No new date has been set, but it is likely to be in September, the very month when the 10th circuit will be considering the civil case against the Oklahoma ban on out-of-state circulators for initiatives. The civil case is called Yes on Term Limits v Savage.
Fancy Farm is a small town in western Kentucky. For 128 years in a row, community leaders have held an annual Political Picnic, at which candidates for public office are invited to speak. The first presidential candidate who was invited, and accepted, was George Wallace. This year the Fancy Farm Political Picnic has invited Senators Obama and McCain, and holds out hope that they will accept. However, the organizers of the Picnic have told Bob Barr that he is not invited. Organizers said, “We rarely ask third party candidates.” The Picnic is held on the grounds of St. Jerome Catholic Church, not on public property. Therefore, the organizers are free to invite whom they wish. Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for this news. For more about the Picnic, see here.
