On October 27, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph LaPlante, a Bush Jr. appointee, issued an opinion in Castro v Scanlan, one of the anti-Trump ballot access lawsuits. Here is the opinion, which says that courts cannot adjudicate the qualifications of presidential candidates. The ruling also says that even if they could, the plaintiff does not have standing because his campaign for the presidency is so weak. He notes that Castro, whose name is on the New Hampshire Republican primary ballot, has not campaigned in New Hampshire. 1:23cv-416.

On November 1, the plaintiff filed an appeal in the First Circuit. 23-1902. He is asking for expedited processing.

Hank Vanderbeek has this article in American Thinker, setting out the law on which presidential candidates get Secret Service protection, and when. The focus of the article is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has requested such protection but who has not yet received it.

Here is today’s story on Presidential candidate ballot access from Yahoo News that quotes our own Richard Winger.

The statement in this story about Virginia’s petition requirement is not quite correct. The petition requirement for both major party candidates getting on primary ballots and third party and independent candidates for POTUS is 5,000 signatures of registered voters, with at least 200 from each of Virginia’s Congressional Districts (currently 11).

Through 2012, the requirement for both was 10,000 total and 400 from each CD. But, the Virginia GOP suffered a major embarrassment in 2012, when only two presidential candidates (Mitt Romney and Ron Paul) made the primary ballot due to the difficult petitioning requirements.

After that, the petition numbers reduction occurred. The Virginia legislature also made the same reduction for the petitions of third party and independent candidates for President, for which the legislature should be given credit for fairness.