The Idaho League of Women Voters’ debate for Idaho’s First Congressional District will include the United Party nominee, as well as the Democratic and Republican nominees. It will be held on October 24.

On August 31, the Illinois State Bd. of Elections deadlocked along party lines, on whether to certify Socialist Equality Party candidate Joe Parnarauskis for the November ballot. He is running for state senate, 52nd district. He submitted 4,991 signatures. The law requires 5% of the last vote cast. However, the law isn’t clear about whether that means 5% of the vote for that particular office in the last election, or 5% of the number of people who put a ballot in the box (within that district) in the last election. Andrew Spiegel, attorney for Parnarauskis, presented evidence that the Board has been calculating the number of signatures incorrectly for the last decade or so. The Board voted to reconvene on September 7, after studying the matter.

Aside from the matter of the dispute on how to calculate the number of signatures, Parnarauskis would also be on the ballot if the Board would accept some petition sheets in which the candidate forgot to include “52nd State Senate district” in the Petition Heading. However, the body of the text includes “52nd State Senate district”. The four Republican Board members voted that the clerical error in the title of the petition is not fatal, but the four Democrats voted that it is fatal.

On August 29, a group of naturalized citizens, and several organizations that support them, sued in U.S. District Court to overturn an Ohio law passed last year. That law requires naturalized citizens to bring their naturalization papers with them when they vote at the polls, to avoid a challenge. The lawsuit points out that most naturalized citizens keep their papers in a safety deposit box, that if they are lost, it takes over a year to replace them, along with a $200 fee. Also, the lawsuit wonders why Ohio won’t be satisfied with a U.S. passport, as proof of citizenship. The case is Boustani v Blackwell.

On August 31, the Illinois Bd. of Elections unanimously certified the statewide Green Party petition. Also, in North Dakota, the Libertarian Party candidate for US Senate has 1,300 signatures, and since only 1,000 are needed, and since North Dakota has no voter registration, he is safely on the ballot. This means that every state that has statewide elections this year will have minor party or independent candidates on the statewide ballot, except Alabama, and with Pennsylvania and New Mexico still unsettled.

The Maryland League of Women Voters is hosting a televised debate for two candidates for the U.S. Senate Democratic nomination, on the evening of August 31. On August 30, three other Democratic candidates for that nomination held a protest in front of the League’s headquarters. The three protesting candidates pointed out that if the League had imposed a 15% poll requirement in 1994, that even Ellen Sauberbrey would have been excluded. She was only polling 14% at the end of August 1994. Yet she went on to win the mid-September 1994 Republican primary for Governor.

Each state League of Women Voters sets its own policy, on whom to invite into televised debates. The Pennsylvania League has a tradition of inviting everyone who is on the ballot into its televised candidate debates, for example.

Law Professor Rick Hasen of Loyola Law School (Los Angeles) writes the nation’s foremost election law blog, and is one of the two co-founders of the Election Law Journal. He wrote a guest column for findlaw.com on August 30, and suggested that the U.S. Supreme Court should rethink its 1974 election law decision, Storer v Brown. Hasen said that “sore loser” laws appear not to be needed. He cited the current Connecticut U.S. Senate race to show that “sore loser” laws are not really essential.

On August 30, a lower state court ruled that even though major parties in Colorado can nominate candidates who haven’t been a member of that party for a year, qualified minor parties do not have the same right. The decision means that the Libertarian Party nominee for Sheriff of Arapahoe County is off the ballot. The party is appealing to the Colorado Supreme Court. The case is Libertarian Party of Colorado v Doty, 06-cv-4768, Arapahoe Dist. Court.

Even the Colorado major parties were once hampered by the one-year rule, but the Colorado Democratic Party won a ruling in 1988 that the one-year rule is unconstitutional, as applied to parties that don’t want it applied to them. In the current case, the judge refused to apply the 1988 ruling to the Libertarian Party because, back in 1991, before the Libertarian Party was a qualified minor party, the State Supreme Court had upheld the one-year disaffiliation law as applied to unqualified parties.

The South Carolina Election Commission still hasn’t finished checking the Labor Party’s petition, but should be done the first week in September. The party needed 10,000 and submitted 16,000 several months ago. The Labor Party is organized nationally, but had never tried to qualify for the ballot in any state, until it decided to qualify in South Carolina. If the petition is approved, the party will be entitled to nominate candidates in 2007 and 2008, but not 2006, since the petition was submitted beyond this year’s May 7 deadline.

On August 30, the 2nd circuit reaffirmed the U.S. District Court decision in Lopez Torres v New York State Board of Elections, 06-6035. The 2nd circuit agreed with the US District Court that New York ballot access laws, for candidates for Delegate to County Judicial Conventions, are too difficult. They require 500 valid signatures (per Assembly district), of party members, to be collected in 37 days. These petitions are for access to a party primary ballot.

Most ballot access litigation involves minor or new party, or independent candidate, access to the general election ballot. But a handful of states, including especially New York, Massachusetts and Maine, make candidate access to a major party primary ballot also very difficult.

This is the second time the 2nd circuit has invalidated the number of signatures needed for a candidate to get on a New York primary ballot. The first time was in 1996, in Rockefeller v Powers. That case struck down the 5% petition requirement for candidates for delegate to the Republican Party national convention.

The 2nd circuit depended on the historical record, which showed that no one was ever able to get on the primary ballot for Delegate to the County Judicial Convention, except candidates sponsored by the major party organizations.

David Sole was nominated by the Michigan Green Party to be its U.S. Senate candidate, on August 6. Sole is also a long-time member of the Workers World Party, and is president of United Auto Workers Local 2334. Sole received the vote of 39 of the 50 delegates to the Green Party nominating convention.

The Workers World Party sometimes run candidates under its own label, but has not done so in any state this year. In California, Workers World members have sometime run in the Peace & Freedom Party’s primary, and have sometimes won PFP nominations. The Workers World Party ran a presidential candidate in 2004 under its own name, and also persuaded the Liberty Union Party of Vermont to nominate that presidential candidate.