Several newspapers have recently run stories about the idea that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan might be an independent candidate for president in 2024. Here is one such story. Hogan is a Republican.
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On August 10, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in Pierce v Jacobsen, 21-35173. The opinion strikes down Montana’s ban on out-of-state circulators for initiative petitions (Montana has never banned out-of-state circulators for other types of petition).
The plaintiffs had also challenged Montana’s ban on paying circulators on a per-signature basis. The decision declined to strike down that ban. It says the ban may be unconstitutional, but plaintiffs didn’t present enough evidence to justify striking it down. See footnote eleven, which says, “We do not hold that pay-per-signature restrictions are per se constitutional.” The opinion also mentions that Montana allows groups that sponsor initiative petition to pay bonuses to circulators who have a good validity rate. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
On August 10, the U.S. District Court in North Carolina that put the Green Party candidates on the ballot last week refused to stay its own decision. See that ruling here.
On August 10, Rebekah Jones, a Democrat running for U.S. House in Florida’s First District, filed an appeal in her ballot access case. The lower state court kept her off the primary ballot because it believed that while she was in Maryland last year, she registered as an independent. She disputes that. The Florida law, requiring candidates to have been a member of a party for one full year before filing, is being used to keep her off.
Technically her name is on the primary ballot, but the lower court ordered that votes for her should not be counted.
There is a Kentucky precedent that duration of membership laws only apply to records from the state in which the candidate is running, not the records of other states. It is not known if Jones’ attorneys are aware of that Kentucky precedent, which is Ball v Whitfield, May 13, 1994, Christian Circuit Court, 94-CI-00315. In that case, Republican U.S. House candidate Ed Whitfield had been a registered Democrat in Florida in the recent past, but when he moved to Kentucky, he registered as a Republican and wanted to run in the Kentucky Republican primary. His ballot status was challenged, but the court ruled that the duration of party membership law only applies to registration inside the state in which the candidate seeks to run. Whitfield then went on to be elected to Congress from Kentucky.
The Desert Sun, a daily newspaper in Palm Springs, has this op-ed about the Common Sense Party. The author advocates that readers help get the party on the California ballot. They can do that by registering into it by January 2024.