On January 2, an individual broke into the Colorado state courts building, which houses the Colorado Supreme Court. He did $35,000,000 worth of damage. See this story. The story quotes the Chief Justice as saying he doubts the attack is related to the December 19, 2023, decision in Anderson v Griswold, the Trump ballot access case.
On January 9, the Russian elections office put Nikolai Kharitonov on the ballot as the Communist candidate for president. See this story. This means there will be four candidates on the ballot.
On December 12, U.S. District Court Judge Allen Winsor, a Trump appointee, refused to disturb the decision of the Florida Democratic Party that only President Joe Biden may run in the party’s presidential primary. Steinberg v Democratic Party of Florida.
Here is the 10-age order. It says that the plaintiff, a Florida Democratic voter, does not have standing, and also that the Democratic Party of Florida is not a state actor. It also suggests he should have sued all 67 county election officials.
Steinberg says he will appeal.
On January 12, the Arizona Secretary of State corrected misinformation that had been appearing on his website. The website had been saying that an independent candidate needs a petition of 3% of the number of registered voters as of January 2024, which would be approximately 135,000 signatures. That has now been deleted.
The statute says the requirement is 3% of the number of people who are registered to vote but who are not members of a qualified party, which is about 45,000 signatures.
The misinformation caused confusion. For example, ,here is an NBC News story that erroneously said the number of signatures is approximately 128,000. Thanks to Rick Lass for the news about the correction.
The Delaware Election Commission website shows that No Labels Party has 1,258 registered members, which is more than enough to make it a qualified party. See the January 1, 2024 data here.
Delaware updates its data every month. The December 1, 2023 tally was the first instance at which Delaware had reported any No Labels registrants. At that time No Labels had 548 registrants.
The requirement is to have registration membershp equal to one-tenth of 1% of the number of registered voters, as of December 31, 2023. That requirement is 769 registrations.
No Labels has issued a press release attacking the Delaware Election Commissioner, Anthony Albence, who has apparently threatened to cancel the party’s qualified status on the basis that some voters were tricked into registering with No Labels. No Labels says all its registration workers wore shirts while they were canvassing saying, “This Is Not A Petition.”
