The Michigan State Court of Claims will hear Davies v Benson, 23-000128, on Monday, November 6. This is the case over whether former President Donald Trump should be allowed on the ballot in the Michigan Republican presidential primary. The hearing will be in Grand Rapids. The judge is not allowing Trump to participate in the case, except that he is allowed to file an amicus curiae brief. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
On October 24, President Joe Biden told the New Hampshire Secretary of State that he won’t file to be on the 2024 Democratic presidential primary. Although the date of the New Hampshire presidential primaries hasn’t been set it, it will be earlier than the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina. The Democratic National Committee has already decided that South Carolina should be the first Democratic presidential primary, so the New Hampshire primary date will violate party rules. See this story.
New Hampshire allows write-ins and no one needs to file a declaration of write-in candidacy in order to have write-ins counted. It is extremely likely that there will be a huge write-in vote for Biden, and those votes will be counted.
On October 23, the Georgia Libertarian Party asked for reconsideration in Cowen v Raffensperger, n.d., 1:17cv-4660. Here is the three-page request, which notes that the U.S. District Court Judge appears to have made an oversight last month when she ruled against the party’s equal protection claim. The general issue in the case is the constitutionality of the law on how anyone gets on the ballot for U.S. House if they are not a member of a party that polled 20% for President in the entire U.S., or 20% for Governor of Georgia, in the last election. The law is so severe, no minor party candidate has ever complied since the law passed in 1943, and no independent has complied since 1964, when the rules did not require the petition to be checked and the petition was not due until October of the election year.
The California election law lets each qualified party decide for itself whether to let independent voters vote in their presidential primaries. As was the case in 2020, the Democratic, Libertarian, and American Independent Parties will let independents choose their presidential primary ballot. The Republican, Green, and Peace & Freedom Parties will not let independents choose one of their primary ballots. Thanks to Eric Wong for this news.
The Libertarian Party of Arkansas has completed its petition to be a recognized political party in Arkansas again.
According to Michael Pakko, LPAR Chair, 13,274 signatures were turned in to the Arkansas Secretary of State. Ten-thousand valid signatures of registered voters are required, meaning that a 75.335% validity rate is needed. All signatures were validated by the LPAR before turn in, and its valid signature count was 10,940.
No word has yet been received from the Secretary of State regarding its count of the number of valid signatures.
It will take 3% of the vote for President for the LPAR to maintain ballot access after the 2024 General Election.
