This article in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, the daily newspaper of Cheyenne, exposes how write-in votes are treated in Wyoming. The article concerns write-ins in primaries for Precinct Committee. But what the article says about those write-ins is also true in general elections. Wyoming won’t tally write-ins.
Tennessee held a televised gubernatorial debate on October 27. See this story. The three candidates were the Democratic nominee and two independent candidates.
Albany, New York ABC TV Station WTEN has this article about why New York only has the Democratic and Republican nominees this year on the ballot for all the statewide offices.
U.S. DISTRICT COURT UPHOLDS ILLINOIS 5% PETITION FOR U.S. HOUSE INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES
JUSTIFICATION IS FEAR OF CROWDED BALLOTS
On September 11, U.S. District Court Judge Franklin U. Valderrama, a Trump appointee, upheld the Illinois petition requirement for independent candidates for U.S. House. Sigcho Lopez v Illinois State Board of Elections, n.d., 1:26cv-9156.
The law requires the signatures of 5% of the last vote cast. The same requirement applies to unqualified minor party candidates.
The plaintiff, Byron Sigcho Lopez, a Chicago city council member, needed 10,816 signatures, to be gathered in 90 days, due in May. He submitted 17,227 raw signatures but was told that only 9,594 were valid.
His evidence showed that no petitioning candidate (neither minor party nor independent) had complied with that Illinois requirement, for U.S. House, since 1974, if they were challenged (in Illinois, if a candidate is not challenged, he or she is automatically put on the ballot as long as the submission is at least 10% of the requirement). His evidence also showed that in the entire history of the United States, only three candidates for U.S. House in any state had ever overcome a requirement greater than 10,816; and all three of them had much longer petitioning periods.
Judge Valderrama seized on that fact and said that “in light of the fact that other House candidates across the country have obtained more than 10,754 signatures or nearly that amount, it does not strike the Court that no reasonably diligent candidate could collect this number of signatures. (page 32).”
Thus, because a candidate somewhere in the United States has succeeded in meeting such a requirement on the average of every 45 years, the opinion concludes that any “reasonably diligent candidate” should be able to do the same (ballot access laws in the U.S. began in 1888, and thus have been in existence for 138 years). This is a peculiar interpretation of “a reasonably diligent candidate.”
On October 26, Alaska filed this brief in U.S.A. v State of Alaska, 3:26cv-376. It leans heavily on the fact that the two Dan Sullivans listed on the ballot can be distinguished from each other. The incumbent and the other Sullivan have different middle initials. The incumbent has “Republican” next to his name, but the other Sullivan does not.
