On June 20, filing closed for the candidates for the Florida legislature. Only three qualified minor parties have any candidates running for the legislature. The Green Party has five candidates, the Constitution Party has one, and the British Reformed Sectarian Party has one. This is the largest number of state legislative candidates the Green Party has ever had in Florida. UPDATE: all five Green Party candidates are unknown to the state Green Party officers. It is conceivable that they were recruited to run (and perhaps even recruited to change their partisan affiliation from something else, to Green), by Republicans. The state Green Party officers will research this in the coming days.

By contrast, in 2006, there were two Libertarians running for the Florida legislature, two Constitution Party members, and one Green.

The British Reformed Sectarian Party was created in 2003 by Thomas J. Kelly. Kelly had been an elected Florida Republican county party official in 2000, and he was offended to learn that he was expected to sign a loyalty oath, pledging that he would not endorse, or financially support, the nominee of any party other than the Republican Party. He researched the issue and determined that such oaths violate the Florida and U.S. Constitutions. He brought a lawsuit in federal court against the Secretary of State, but lost the case in both U.S. District Court and in the Eleventh Circuit. In the Eleventh Circuit, the judges who ruled against him were Susan Black, Paul Roney, and Walter Stapleton.

Kelly then left the Republican Party and determined to start his own party, to satirize the view that parties are private organizations. He wrote outrageous membership rules for his own new party, which he decided to name the “Black, Roney, Stapleton Party”, to poke fun at the three judges who had ruled against him. Then he thought that it might violate the rights of the judges to name a party after them without their permission, so he switched the name to the “British Reformed Sectarian Party”, keeping the initials “B,R,S”. Most Florida counties won’t spell out the full name of political parties on the ballot anyway, so when the British Reformed Sectarian Party appears on the ballot, it is with the label “BRS”. Kelly is the BRS Party candidate for state representative this year, just as he was in 2004.

The Libertarian Party, perhaps joined by other minor parties and possibly by Ralph Nader, is likely to sue Oklahoma over presidential ballot access. Existing law requires unqualified parties to submit a petition of 3% of the last presidential vote to place their nominees on the ballot. Independent presidential candidates face an identical hurdle.

The U.S. Supreme Court said in Anderson v Celebrezze that states should be less concerned keeping presidential candidates off general election ballots, than candidates for other office. The presidential election, in a sense, belongs to the entire nation. But Oklahoma stands this on its head, by letting independent candidates for any office except president on the November ballot with no petition at all, just a fee.

Oklahoma is the only state with no procedure for the presidential candidate of an unqualified party, or an independent presidential candidate, to get on the ballot with some showing of support that is at or below 2% of the last vote cast. Furthermore, Oklahoma is one of only 5 states that ban all write-in votes. Oklahoma was the only state in 2004 in which voters either had to vote Republican for president, or Democratic for president, or they couldn’t vote.

Although Barr will depend on a lawsuit for Oklahoma, he expects to be on in all other states, and will launch a West Virginia petition drive very soon.