The Libertarian Party will submit its Maryland petition for party status in 2028 and 2030 soon, either this month or the first week of December.
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Connecticut is the only state in which the vote test for qualified status is separate for each particular office. In 2022 the Connecticut Independent Party lost its status for Governor because it polled under 1% for that office. So in 2026, it had to petition in order to run a gubernatorial candidate. At the election, it got 2.1% for Governor, so it now has qualified status for all statewide races except President. Here is a news story about the party.
On November 10, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down several restrictions on initiative petitions that the legislature had passed in 2025. McVay v Lepak, 123179. Parts of the opinion were unanimous but other parts were 5-4. Here is the Opinion.
Unanimously struck were a law that initiative circulators must be registered voters, and a ban on initiative campaigns receiving contributions from out-of-state individuals, and a law that gave the Secretary of State more power to describe how the initiative idea appears on the ballot, and detailed disclosure rules on how much, and when, each paid circulator was paid.
Also struck down, but not unanimously, was a ban on paying circulators-per-signature, and a cap on how many signatures could be collected from each county.
There were other restrictions that were not challenged, but the majority struck down the entire law, Senate Bill 1027, so even those less controversial provisions were eliminated. The majority felt that there were so many unconstitutional provisions in the bill, the remainder could not be severed out.
Very few California minor party members ever appear on the general election ballot for U.S. House or state legislature. With only two exceptions, in the 15-year history of the top-two system in California, the only minor party members who have qualified for the general election are those who ran in a primary in which one major party didn’t run anyone. This year there were four such candidates, all on the November ballot for legislature. Three of them broke long-standing records for their parties.
Kevin Akin, chair of the Peace & Freedom Party, ran in the 63rd Assembly seat, and polled 57,031 votes, which was 43.36%. This is the highest percentage of the vote any Peace & Freedom Party member has ever received in a California partisan race. Here is his campaign website. The California election results are still not complete. Akin’s only opponent was the Republican incumbent.
William Brown, Jr. of the Libertarian Party, ran in the 12th State Senate district. He polled 106,614 votes, 37.92%. This was the highest percentage for a California Libertarian Party nominee running in a partisan election since 1991, when David McCann, running in a special election, received 37.93%. Of course it is possible that when all the votes have been counted, Brown will end up with a slightly higher percentage that exceeds the 1991 showing. Brown’s opponent was a Republican. Here is Brown’s website.
Victor Hernandez, of the Green Party, ran in the 59th Assembly district. He received 73,844 votes, 40.36%. This is the highest percentage for a California Green in a partisan race since 1999, when Audie Bock was elected to the Assembly with 50.55%. Hernandez’s opponent was a Republican. Here is the Hernandez website.
The fourth minor party member on the California ballot, Green Party member Mark Rendon, running for Assembly, 14th district, got 36,443 votes, 21.5%, against a Democrat. Here is the Rendon website.
Retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner died on November 10. He was more renowned that most Appellate Judges, and there are many obituaries for him. Unfortunately, he was a leading opponent of tolerant ballot access. He wrote four opinions, each one worse than the last. Three of them upheld severe Illinois restrictions, and one upheld a severe Indiana restriction.
In 1985 he wrote Hall v Simcox, an Indiana case filed by the Communist Party’s 1984 presidential nominee. Indiana had recently quadrupled its petition requirement. The Communist Party had been able to qualify under the old one-half of 1% standard, most recently in 1980. But the new requirement kept him off the ballot in 1984, when 35,040 signatures were required. Posner upheld the new law on the grounds that the U.S. Supreme Court decision Jenness v Fortson, a 1971 decision, had upheld Georgia’s 5% requirement. He wrote that he had no choice. But he ignored the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court teaching in Storer v Brown,which said that there is no litmus test for judging ballot access requirements, and that courts should determine the constitutionality of a requirement by seeing how many candidates or parties were able to qualify. No statewide minor party or independent petition had succeeded in Indiana in 1984, the first year the requirement was in effect, but he ignored that fact.
In 2004 he wrote Nader v Keith, upholding the Illinois June petition deadline for minor party and independent candidates. That same deadline had been enjoined in 2000 by a U.S. District Court judge, but its constitutionality had not been settled. Ralph Nader had filed the 2000 case as well, and unfortunately after he won injunctive relief in 2000, he never finished the case. Instead, tripped up by the same deadline in his 2004 independent run, he filed a new case, and lost. Judge Posner wrote that lenient ballot access laws would make politics more ideological by reducing the influence of the median voter. He cited no evidence and no precedent for that conclusion.
In 2008 he wrote Stevo v Keith, which upheld the Illinois number of signatures for a minor party or independent candidate for U.S. House. The law required a petition of 5% of the last vote cast in most election years, which was generally between 12,000 and 16,000 signatures. But in years ending with the digit “2”, the number of signatures was exactly 5,000 signatures. The plaintiff was not running in a year in which the 5,000 signature requirement was in effect. But he did submit more than 5,000 valid signatures. He argued that if the 5,000 signature requirement worked in years ending in “2” by keeping ballots uncrowded, there is no state interest in requiring as many as 16,000 signatures in other years. But Judge Posner upheld the Illinois law, stating that if the 5,000 signature law were in effect in all years, that was not good policy because some U.S. House districts have greater populations than other districts. He ignored the history that showed even in years ending in “2”, there had never been more than four candidates on the ballot for U.S. House. He also ignored the fact that approximately half the states have flat numbers of signatures for all election years.
In 2016, a U.S. District Court Judge in Illinois had enjoined the 5% petition for U.S. House after noting the evidence that no petitioning candidate for U.S. House had managed to surmount the 5% petition since 1974, if the petitioning candidate had been challenged. The U.S. District Court Judge accepted this evidence and based her ruling on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1974 teaching that prior experience matters for courts to consider. The state appealed, and Judge Posner and his two colleagues on the Seventh Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court, without a word about their rationale.