On October 2, President Joe Biden, speaking to a reporter for ProPublica, commented on the possibility that No Labels will run a presidential candidate in 2024. He said, referring to No Labels leader Joe Lieberman, “Well, he has a democratic right to do it. There’s no reason not to do that. Now it’s going to help the other guy. And he knows that…That’s a political decision he’s making that I obviously think is a mistake. But he has a right to do that.”
As a result of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday not to hear the New York ballot access case, it is likely that in November 2024, New York will be the only state in the nation with only the Democratic and Republican nominees on the ballot. Yet the entire media in New York state, with the exception of Spectrum TV, has failed to note this.
The Libertarian Party is already on the ballot for president in 2024 in all the difficult states except New York. Although the party is still not on the ballot in 16 other states, those 16 other states are all states which require 25,000 or fewer signatures (if it weren’t for Illinois, they would all be at 10,000 or fewer). So it can be expected that the Libertarian nominee will be on in all of those other 16 states.
The New York Times knows this, or should know it. One long-time writer for the New York Times has subscribed to BAN for decades. Instead, the problem is that the New York Times doesn’t want to print news about the ballot access destruction that former Governor Andrew Cuomo imposed on the state in 2020. The New York Times never mentioned what happened to New York ballot access in 2020, never mentioned the lower court decisions upholding those new laws, and now has not mentioned the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to get involved.
The 2020 ballot access law changes changed the definition of a qualified party, so that the Libertarian, Green, and Independence Parties were removed from the ballot. The same bill also tripled the petition requirement from 15,000 signatures to 45,000, without expanding the six-week petitioning period. The bill also vastly increased the difficulty of meeting the distribution requirement.
Aidan McLaughlin and Diana Falzone have this article on mediaite.com, on whether Robert J. Kennedy, Jr.’s likely independent candidacy is more helpful to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.
Here is a tweet on this poll from Echelon Insights. Thanks to Clifford Thies for the heads up!
On October 1, Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom revealed that he is appointing Laphonza Butler to fill the vacancy in the U.S. Senate created by the death of Dianne Feinstein. However, Butler is registered to vote in Maryland. Article One of the U.S. Constitution has a residency requirement for members of Congress that applies when the member is elected. Law Professor Stephen Sachs writes here about the legal ambiguity concerning the appointment. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.
