The Maine Secretary of State has posted new registration data. See it here. The percentages are: Democratic 35.52%, Republican 28.16%, Green Independent 4.06%, Libertarian .06%, other and independent 32.20%.
In November 2020, the percentages were: Democratic 35.68%, Republican 28.36%, Green Independent 4.01%, other and independent 31.94%. At the time the state did not allow anyone to register Libertarian.
On June 20, the New York Libertarian and Green Parties asked the Second Circuit for an injunction, putting their candidates on the November 2022 ballot. The case was already open but had been moving slowly. It is Libertarian Party of New York v New York, 21-1464. Here is the here.
On June 21, the State Board of Elections filed a brief in opposition. See it brief.
According to this story, if John F. Wood decides to run for U.S. Senate in Missouri as an independent candidates, his backers have already raised $5,000,000 for the campaign. However, Wood has not yet said if he will run. The petition deadline is August 1 and the requirement is 10,000 signatures, to be collected from anywhere in the state. There is no distribution requirement; it was repealed in 1993 after Libertarian Party lobbying.
On June 22, U.S. District Court Judge Tom Barber, a Trump appointee, refused to enjoin the Florida law that does not permit a party to run any candidates who have not been registered members for a full year, even if the party is a new party which couldn’t possibly have any eligible members.
Here is the order in People’s Party of Florida v Florida Department of State, m.d., 8:22cv-1274. The People’s Party wanted to nominate a candidate for Pasco County Commission this year, but she couldn’t qualify because she has not been a member of the People’s Party for a full year. But it was impossible for her to register into the party a year ago, because it wasn’t on the ballot until September 2021, and Florida does not allow anyone to register into a party that isn’t ballot-qualified.
The order fails to mention all the other lower court decisions on this subject, all of which agree that states cannot impose this type of law on new parties. Such cases were won in the past in federal court in Oklahoma, and in the State Supreme Courts of New Mexico and Nevada. As to the U.S. Supreme Court decision Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut, which says that states cannot bar parties from nominating non-members, Judge Barber said that case doesn’t control this case. He didn’t say why. Instead he depended on Storer v Brown, which upheld a California law that wouldn’t let independent candidates qualify if they had been members of a qualified party during the proceding year. That issue is separate from the issue of party autonomy to nominate whom they wish.
The order says the party should have filed the case sooner, although there would obviously be no election-administration problem if relief had been granted. Putting one more candidate on the ballot, over four months before the general election, does not disrupt election procedures. In the past the U.S. Supreme Court has added candidates to the general election ballot as late as August (John B. Anderson in Ohio), September (George Wallace in Ohio and Eugene McCarthy in Texas), and even in October (the 1968 nominees of the Alabama National Democratic Party, and the nominees of the Harold Washington Party in Illinois in 1990, and the nominees of the Socialist Workers and Socialist Labor in New York in 1970).
The order says the plaintiff-candidate is free to be a write-in candidate, but that is not true; the filing deadline for declared write-in candidates in Florida has already passed.
Two rival slates of statewide candidates are circulating petitions in New Hampshire, both with the ballot label “Libertarian”. One slate is composed of Karlyn Borysenko for Governor and Jeremy Kauffman for U.S. Senate. They were nominated at the January 2022 state convention.
The other slate is composed of Kelly Halldorson for Governor and Kevin Kahn for U.S. Senator.
New Hampshire election law has no means for an unqualified party to protect its party label. Thus, it is possible for the same label to be used by two different candidates for the same office. In 2008, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the Freedom of Association part of the First Amendment requires states to provide name protection for unqualified parties, but that lawsuit lost.
It seems reasonable that the vote for the two slates could be added together, to determine if the Libertarian Party meets the vote test in 2022. New Hampshire defines a political party this way: “‘Party’ shall mean any political organization which at the preceding state general election received at least 4 percent of the total number of votes cast for any of the following: the office of governor or the offices of United States Senators.” If the combined Libertarian vote for Governor, or for U.S. Senator, equals 4%, then the party would be entitled to its own primary in 2024, and the internal split in the party, if it still exists in 2024, would be handled with a contested primary.
The deadline has already passed for Declarations of Candidacy, so it is possible to know now that the only non-major party candidates for Governor in 2022 will be the two Libertarians. However, for U.S. Senate, besides the two Libertarians, there are some independent candidates circulating petitions.
