Eleventh Circuit Refuses to Rehear Florida People’s Party Ballot Access Case

Posted on by October 23, 2022
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On October 21, the Eleventh Circuit denied rehearing in People’s Party of Florida v Florida Department of State, 22-12451. The issue was the Florida law that makes it impossible for a party to nominate someone who has not been a registered member for a full year before the candidate filing deadline. The effect of the law is devastating for new parties, because no one can register as a member of an unqualified party in Florida. So if a new party qualifies in an election year, it can’t run any candidates.

The law would even apply to presidential elections. Florida is one of the few states in which presidential elector candidates must be registered into the party that nominates them. So if a new party were formed in a presidential election year in Florida, it couldn’t have any valid candidates for presidential elector, and therefore couldn’t run a presidential nominee.

The Eleventh Circuit has said the case is moot. But the U.S. Supreme Court settled in 1969 that ballot access cases are not moot just because the election is over.

The Eleventh Circuit original opinion in this case refused to acknowledge that in 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court said that the Freedom of Association Clause in the First Amendment means that states can’t tell parties they can’t nominate a non-member.

New York Daily News Criticizes Second Circuit’s One-Sentence “Opinion” on Ballot Access

Posted on by October 23, 2022
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On October 23, the New York Daily News carried an editorial, criticizing the Second Circuit for refusing to give any ballot access relief to the Libertarian and Green Parties, and for not even explaining its reasoning. As the editorial notes, the opinion is one sentence long, saying there is nothing wrong with the U.S. District Court opinion earlier that upheld the 2020 ballot access rules.

There is much wrong with the U.S. District Court decision. It said that New York is justified in keeping minor parties off the ballot because otherwise the state would need to waste money on public funding for minor party candidates. This was fallacious because the Second Circuit had already ruled in a Connecticut case that if a state has public funding, it can restrict it to the major parties. Also, the U.S. District Court made errors of fact when it compared New York’s ballot access rules to the laws of other states. The U.S. District Court ignored all of the evidence that the minor parties had presented about the failure of New York to even have a procedure for a group to transform itself into a qualified party in advance of any election. The U.S. District Court didn’t discuss why the petitioning period should be squeezed into a six-week period, when a majority of state allow unlimited petitioning period.

Spectrum News Sponsors Exclusionary New York U.S. Senate Debate

Posted on by October 22, 2022
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New York has three candidates for U.S. Senate on the November 2022 ballot, the Democratic and Republican nominees, and independent candidate Diane Sare. Spectrum News is sponsoring a Senate debate on October 30, but it has only invited candidates who are at 15% at the polls. However, there is no poll in New York that has asked respondents about their support for Sare. All four of the polls relied on by Spectrum News have asked respondents if they favor the Republican or the Democrat, and did not ask respondents about anyone else, not even the generic “other.”