On June 7, Robert Klor Dean filed this four-page brief in Libertarian National Committee v Dean, e.d. Virginia, 3:23cv-155. Dean has been an officer of the Tidewater Libertarian Party. In March 2023 the Libertarian National Committee sued Dean, alleging trademark infringement. Dean’s brief defends himself and asks that the Court dismiss the lawsuit. Dean does not have an attorney and he is representing himself.
On June 8, A7690 passed both houses of the New York legislature. This is the bill that sets up an April 2 date for 2024 presidential primaries.
Former New Jersey Goveror Christine Todd Whitman here explains why she joined the Forward Party. During the years she was Governor, she was a Republican.
The article says that the Forward Party is on the ballot in six states, but actually it is only on the ballot in Florida. Forward Party spokespersons tend to say they are “on the ballot” when they have merely filed paperwork to attempt to qualify.
Brian A. Beute recently announced that he will run for Seminole County, Florida Supervisor of Elections next year as a Forward Party candidate. Florida elects that position in partisan elections.
The Economist magazine’s Economist Intelligence Unit (“EIU”) has issued its Democracy Index 2022 report, which it does annually. For the seventh consecutive year, the United States has been rated as a “Flawed Democracy,” ranked 30th among all nations, down from 26th in the 2021 report.
In this report, nations are rated on a ten point scale, with “Full Democracies” earning a score between 8 and 10, and “Flawed Democracies” scoring between 6 and 8. The US Overall Score was 7.85.
“Hybrid Regimes” were nations that earned an Overall Score between 4 and 6. A score below 4 meant the nation has an Authoritarian Regime.
Each democracy’s Overall Score was an average of scores in five subcategories: Electoral Process & Pluralism, Functioning of Government, Political Participation, Political Culture and Civil Liberties. Within each of the five subcategories, there were between 8 and 17 fairly objective questions, each of which required a “Yes” or “No” or “In Between” answer.
The US’ lowest subcategory scores were 6.43 on Functioning of Government and 6.25 on Political Culture.
The report has an interesting and in-depth analysis of Russia’s inability to develop into a functioning democracy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and how that led to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War.
Here is the report:
The Libertarian Party has had nominees on the ballot for Governor and/or U.S. Senator in all 50 states. But only in Tennessee have the Libertarian nominees been unable to have their party label on the ballot, except in 2000.
When one examines the best percentage ever for a Libertarian for Governor or U.S. Senator in each state, in only three states is there no instance when a Libertarian for those offices managed to get as much as 1%. They are Tennessee, Maine, and Rhode Island. The main reason there are no such examples in Maine and Rhode Island is that there have been so few Libertarians on the ballot for Governor and U.S. Senate in those two states. Rhode Island is the only state in which the party has never been on the ballot for U.S. Senate.
In Tennessee, minor party nominees suffer because they only have the label “independent” next to their names, and most voters don’t know who the minor party nominees are. Tennessee won’t permit party labels except for qualified parties, and the petition to be a qualified party is so difficult, no group has ever used it since 1968, when George Wallace’s American Party did it. It requires 56,083 signatures.
