On March 27, a Missouri Democrat filed a lawsuit against the Secretary of State, because she refused to let him appear on the Democratic primary ballot for U.S. House, 7th district. The Secretary of State refused to accept his candidacy because the Democratic Party of Missouri said the candidate, Glenn Miller, is a white supremacist (Miller accepts this designation as accurate). Miller v Missouri Secretary of State, 06-5032-cv-SW.

A few states empower political parties to reject a member or a candidate in that party’s own primary, if the member or candidate is not in sympathy with party principles. However, Missouri has no such law. Therefore, the state will need to establish that there is a common law right for political parties to exclude, something that will probably be difficult to do. This case may create an interesting precedent.

Illinois State Senator James Meeks said over the weekend that he will attempt to create a new party, and be its gubernatorial candidate, this year. He is not only a State Senator, but pastor of Chicago’s Salem Baptist Church, which has 26,000 members. When he was elected to the State Senate in 2002, he won as the nominee of the Honesty and Integrity Party, so presumably that would be the name of his party. However, he is also running for re-election to the State Senate as a Democrat. If he goes ahead with his gubernatorial run, he would need to withdraw from his re-election race. Petitioning for third party petitions starts on March 28. Other petitions that will be circulating starting that day are the Green and Constitution Party statewide petitions.

The Constitution Party is now ballot-qualified in Montana, as a result of obtaining 5,000 valid signatures on its party petition. This time, the party is running a candidate for a statewide office (Clerk of the Supreme Court), so it is highly likely to poll enough votes to remain on the ballot for 2008.

In Nebraska, the Constitution Party’s affiliate, the Nebraska Party, has also re-qualified, by submitting 4,735 valid signatures. The party is now the only party on the Nebraska ballot, except for the Democrats and Republicans. The party is extremely likely to poll enough votes to remain on the ballot for 2008 as well, since it has candidates for several statewide offices, and there is no Democrat in those races, making it virtually certain that it will poll 5%.