On July 20, John Wayne Smith qualified for the Florida ballot as a gubernatorial candidate. He is a Libertarian, but since the Libertarian Party of Florida decided to run no one for this office, Smith qualified as an independent candidate.
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Max Linn, Reform Party candidate for Governor of Florida, filed on July 20. He is the first political party nominee for Governor of Florida (other than Democrats and Republicans) on the ballot since 1920. In 1920, the gubernatorial race included a Democrat, a Republican, and a Socialist. Never since then has any minor party nominee appeared on the Florida ballot for Governor (although an independent qualified in 2002).
On July 19, the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee passed H.88. The bill does some good but some harm. It does not change the number of signatures needed for a new party to get on the ballot. It does lower the number of votes needed for a party to remain on the ballot, from 10% of the vote for governor or president, to 2%. That is a significant improvement.
Unfortunately, the bill makes some things worse. It imposes filing fees on candidates nominated by convention (currently, new parties always nominate by convention, and their nominees need not pay a filing fee; the original intent of filing fees was to help pay for the administrative cost of primaries, so it didn’t make sense to impose fees on candidates nominated by convention).
Also, it seems to require a party to poll 2% for both president and governor (no state has ever had a requirement that a party must meet the vote test in more than one race).
H.88 also lowers the number of signatures needed for a statewide independent from the old unconstitutional requirement (2% of the number of registered voters) to 2% of the last gubernatorial vote cast. 2% of the last gubernatorial vote is currently 69,734 signatures.
On July 18, the Oakland city council voted 6-2 to put a ballot question on the November ballot. It will ask Oakland voters if they wish to use Instant-Runoff Voting for city council elections.
Maine is one of 13 states in which state income tax forms provide a “Check-off” for taxpayers who want to help any particular political party. The tax returns filed this year show that the Maine Greens received more money from this “tax-off” provision than the Maine Republicans did. The August 1 2006 Ballot Access News will contain the data for all parties, for all 13 states.