On July 14, Jesse Ventura said on Larry King Live that he will not run for U.S. Senate this year in Minnesota.
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The Green Party, now on the ballot in 21 states plus D.C., hopes to place its presidential nominee on the ballot in at least 40 states plus D.C., with this strategy. Six Green Parties can handle their own ballot access; they are Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Washington.
Then, the party hopes to get 13 more states, by the device of having Green Parties pair up with each other. In other words, a Green Party that is safely on the ballot already (or a Green Party in a state in which ballot access is hopelessly difficult) will help a neighbor state with the neighbor state’s petition. According to GreenPartyWatch, the formulas are: Alabama will get help from Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; Connecticut will get help from Massachusetts and Rhode Island; Iowa will get help from Illinois and Wisconsin; Kansas will get help from Nebraska; Kentucky will get help from Illinois and Indiana; Missouri will get help from Arkansas; New Hampshire will get help from Maine; Ohio will get help from Michigan; Pennsylvania will get help from Maryland and D.C.; Utah will get help from Arizona; Vermont will get help from Maine; Virginia will get help from D.C. and Maryland; Wyoming will get help from Colorado.
That would just leave these ten states without ballot status: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas. It is possible that Alaska can do its own petition, but not likely; it needs 3,128 signatures by August 6.
On June 14, Ralph Nader submitted 2,000 signatures to be an independent candidate in Rhode Island. The state requires 1,000 signatures.
On July 14, U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Sargus held a hearing in Ohio Libertarian Party v Brunner. The issue is whether the Ohio Libertarian Party is qualified or not. The old law on how a party becomes qualified was struck down in 2006, and the legislature has never replaced it. To fill the gap, the Secretary of State created a new procedure, with a deadline three weeks later than the old unconstitutional deadline (November of the year before the election), and with the number of signatures cut in half (from 40,228 signatures to 20,114 signatures). The Ohio Libertarian Party had turned in 6,500 signatures on the day before the March 2008 primary instead. No other group even tried to qualify as a party this year in Ohio.
The hearing lasted 90 minutes. The judge was very well-informed about the details of the case, and seemed very interested in it. He indicated he will have a ruling in the next 10 days. Approximately 20 people were in the courtroom audience. It always helps a ballot access case when the judge sees that the supporters of whatever party or candidate is trying to get on the ballot cared enough to attend the oral argument.
On July 14, Ralph Nader turned in 18,000 signatures to qualify as an independent presidential candidate in South Carolina. The state requires 10,000. Nader is the first person to submit petitions as an independent candidate in South Carolina since 1992, when Perot also qualified as an independent in that state.
In 2004, Nader had received the nomination of the ballot-qualified Independence Party of South Carolina. This year, the Independence Party of South Carolina has equivocated about whom it wants to nominate for president. The party’s leadership has considered nominating Barack Obama, although it is unlikely that Obama will let any ballot-qualified party in South Carolina (other than the Democratic Party, of course) nominate him. The South Carolina Attorney General still hasn’t issued his opinion on whether two parties that jointly run the same slate of presidential electors, can have their vote totals added together.