The New Mexico ballot access case hearing will be in federal court on September 18. The judge will probably rule very soon afterwards whether to place the Libertarian Party nominees on the ballot. The issue is whether New Mexico (uniquely among all states) may require a new party to submit one petition to qualify itself, and then additional petitions for each of the people it has nominated by convention. The party already did the petition to qualify itself, and argues that the state has no interest in requiring any more petitions.

On September 11, an Ohio State Court of Appeals kept an anti-smoking initiative off the ballot, because some of the circulators answered a question improperly. A new Ohio law requires petition circulators to fill out a form, telling the name of their employer, if they are paid to circulate. Some of the circulators wrote that their employer was the American Cancer Society, which was sponsoring the initiative. Technically, however, the American Cancer Society had contracted with a paid petitioning firm to collect the signatures, so the true employer was that paid petitioning firm. In re Protest of Evans, 06-ap-539-548. The cae is being appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.

On September 11, a U.S. District Court issued an injunction, directing South Carolina to place the Working Families Party nominees on the November 2006 ballot. The issue was the deadline for turning in the party petition. The law says the petition is due six months before the general election, and the party complied with this law. But the state then argued that the party should not be allowed to nominate any nominees this year, since the schedule for party nomination meetings for older parties requires that those meetings take place in the early spring.

The state had been sued over this issue in 1996, by the Natural Law Party, and in court had conceded that it was wrong. This year, the Election Commission decided to ignore what it had done in 1996 and put up a fight to keep the Working Families Party off this year’s ballot. However, the party won. The case is Working Families Party v South Carolina Election Commission, 3:06cv-2125.