#ballot access

[nodynasty4us]

“But tens of thousands of signatures have been gathered on behalf of the famed left-wing academic in key states thanks to self-organized grassroots volunteers — and some help from outside operatives tied to a Republican consulting firm.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kerry Eleveld at Daily Kos:

The debate terms agreed to by the campaigns of President Joe Biden and Donald Trump still include a wild card: whether independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will participate. Whether Kennedy manages to qualify is one question. He needs to garner 15% support in four high-quality national polls and make the ballot in enough states to conceivably get 270 electoral votes. This week, Kennedy's running mate, Nicole Shanahan, pledged to pour $8 million into the campaign's ballot access efforts.

To date, Kennedy has confirmed ballot access in just three states—Michigan, Utah, and Oklahoma—worth 28 electoral votes and claims to have access in nearly a dozen other states worth 131 electoral votes.  But regardless of whether Kennedy meets the criteria, there's no world in which he has any chance of winning the presidency. In fact, his running mate admitted they have no path and instead hope to influence "policy." "It would be great if we could take office come, you know, November after the election, but we understand we're up against a lot,” Shananhan said in an interview with YouTube commentator Luke Gromen. “So we're just taking every opportunity every day to help shape policy through the voice of candidacy.” Kennedy may not be a serious candidate for president, but he is a serious threat to the presidency. His presence on the ballot in any of the hotly contested swing states could easily throw the election to Trump, who is counting on the help of third-party candidates to triumph in November. And Trump poses a clear and present danger to the republic.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running a Diet MAGA campaign who could be a serious threat to effect the general election.

[alwaysbewoke]

[deadpresidents]

How dangerous is RFK Jr to Biden?

First of all, I think it's important to note that RFK Jr. isn't going to be a threat to anybody unless he gets ballot access in November. I believe he's officially gained ballot access in one state so far and looks to have met the requirements in about eight or nine others. I don't know the exact number today, but that seems to leave at least 40 states that he still has to work to gain access to.

Now, if he works out a deal with the Libertarian Party for their nomination, it would get him very close to getting on the ballot in every state. If he -- and the Libertarian Party -- are smart, they'll figure out a way to work together in order to achieve that. Otherwise there is just no way that he'll make the kind of splash that the media is suggesting. Sure, if he only gets on the ballot in a handful of states that happen to be battleground states, he can certainly play the part of spoiler. But he can't do that as a write-in candidate in states where he isn't officially on the ballot.

But, honestly, I think RFK Jr. would draw more voters away from Trump than Biden. Yes, RFK Jr. was a lifelong Democrat before making this bid for the Presidency as an independent, but his anti-vaccine, conspiracy-fueled worldview is much more aligned with Trump's voters and the MAGA cult. I think it's possible that more people would be willing to vote for RFK Jr. because they see him as a less dangerous, (somewhat) less insane version of Trump than traditional Democratic voters who would be willing to vote for Kennedy because President Biden is old. I believe it would hurt Trump more than it would hurt Biden.

The most important thing to watch for is ballot access, though. If RFK Jr. can't get on the ballot in the majority of the states he's going to be a non-factor. It is not easy to get nationwide ballot access without the support of an established party's nomination -- like the Libertarians -- and it's already almost April. Announcing his running mate this early was a necessity if he's going to run as a true independent because some states require the identity of the ticket in order to get on the ballot in the general election. But unless they partner with the Libertarians, RFK Jr. is going to need to race against the clock to meet the requirements -- which are often different from state-to-state -- for ballot access in as many states as possible.

[nando161mando]

Remember to vote for the lesser... Wait... Wtf?

[jangillman]

-NEWS-

Michigan’s Voter Rolls List 8.4M Voters. There Are Fewer Than 8M Voting-Age Residents In The State.

[because--palestine]

Gazoline Trump, Nail Polish Remover Kamala, and Smoothie Jill Stein

[circleandsquarecomic]

Triangle Defends Democracy

[lordzannis]

perplexity will help with sources

Statewide election dates

May 21, 2024: Primary November 5, 2024: General election

[progressivegraffiti]

Green Party Ballot Access

The United States needs more than one political party. Help the Green Party get on every state ballot for the 2024 Election.

Meanwhile, support Ranked Choice Voting, to end possible spoilers and so people can safely vote their conscience. (See how 3rd parties and RCV work together?)

Nothing will boost American democracy more than Ranked Choice Voting. (Except maybe public funded elections.)

[nodynasty4us]

From the July 21, 2024 article:

“The Democratic nominee for president will be on all 50 state ballots,” wrote longtime Democratic Party lawyer Marc Elias. “There is no basis for any legal challenge. Period.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Marina Villeneuve at Salon:

Legal experts say they're confident that lawsuits filed over the potential placement of Vice President Kamala Harris atop the Democratic ticket will fail — and said campaign finance lawsuits will wind up tangled up in legal battles that won't be settled until after the election. President Joe Biden's announcement Sunday that he will no longer run for re-election in November set the political world in a tailspin.  Even before Biden's announcement, Republicans had already vowed to file lawsuits over such a move, which they argue subverts the democratic process and ballots cast by primary voters. “I think in states where it can be contested, I expect that it will be, and they’ll have an interesting battle on their hands,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on ABC News Sunday.

Johnson added: “I think they would run into some legal impediments in at least a few of these jurisdictions.” And a June Heritage Foundation memo laid out a plan for "pre-election litigation" that could "try to block a presidential candidate from withdrawing." Northwestern Law professor Michael Kang told Salon that Biden withdrawing from the race "at this point in the year is basically unprecedented, so some of the legal questions raised are untested." Specifically — some Republicans and legal experts have raised questions about the legality of Harris taking over campaign finance funds. Republican FEC chairman Sean Cooksey on Sunday tweeted a campaign finance regulation that says contributions "should be either returned" to donors or "redesignated" if a candidate doesn't end up running.  

Politically-motivated lawsuits against the placement of Kamala Harris on ballots are heavily likely to fail.

[nodynasty4us]

"living memory"

Excuse me, Nathan J. Robinson, but I remember when third-party candidate George Wallace actually got electoral votes in 1968, and I am still living as of the last time I checked.

Read the essay for a lot more about ballot access.

“RFK Jr. can afford to spend millions fighting to secure ballot access, in part because he has a wealthy running mate, Silicon Valley lawyer Nicole Shanahan, who gave the campaign $8 million in April alone. Even so, he’s only on the ballot in seven states so far. An independent candidate without wealthy benefactors has very little hope. And if you can’t get ballot access, you can’t get into the debates. It’s easy to see how this makes it difficult for an independent candidacy to catch fire: if a third candidate had been on the debate stage with Trump and Biden recently, it might well have ignited their popular support, but without preexisting popular support they can’t get ballot access, without which they can’t appear at the debate. Is it any wonder that the only third party candidate to gain traction in a presidential election in living memory (Ross Perot, who received nearly 20 percent of the popular vote in 1992) was a billionaire?”

— In a Functioning Democracy, Third Party Candidates Would Flourish

[reasonsforhope]

For all the concern in recent years that U.S. democracy is on the brink, in danger or under threat, a report out Tuesday offers a glimmer of good news for American voters worried that casting a ballot will be difficult in 2024.

Put simply, the new data shows that voting in America has gotten easier over the past two decades. More voters have the ability to cast a ballot before Election Day, with the majority of U.S. states now offering some form of early in-person voting and mail voting to all voters.

"Although we often talk in a partisan context about voter fraud and voter suppression and whether voters have access to the ballot, the reality is, over the past 25 years, we've greatly increased the convenience of voting for almost all Americans," said David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which authored the new report...

The data shows that, despite real efforts by some Republican-led legislatures to restrict access at the margins, the trend in the U.S. since 2000 has been toward making it easier to vote: Nearly 97% of voting-age American citizens now live in states that offer the option to vote before Election Day.

"The lies about early voting, the lies about voting machines and efforts in some state legislatures to roll back some of the election integrity and convenience measures that have evolved over the last several decades, those efforts almost all failed," Becker said. "In almost every single state, voters can choose to vote when they want to."

Forty-six states and Washington, D.C., offer some form of early in-person voting, the report tallied, and 37 of those jurisdictions also offer mail voting to all voters without requiring an excuse...

In 2000

In 2024

Infographic via NPR. If you go to the article, you can watch an animation of this map that shows voting availability in every election since 2000.

There are some political trends that show up in the data. Of the 14 states that don't offer mail voting to all voters, for instance, 12 have Republican-led legislatures.

-via NPR, March 19, 2024. Article continues below.

But maybe the more striking trends are geographic. Every single state in the western U.S. has offered some form of early and mail voting to all voters since 2004, according to the data. And those states span the political spectrum, from conservative Idaho to liberal California.

"It's really hard to talk about partisanship around this issue because historically there just hasn't been much," Mann said. "We've seen voting by mail and early in-person voting supported by Republican legislatures, Democratic legislatures, Republican governors, Democratic governors. We see voters in both parties use both methods." ...

In 2020, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts all made changes to make voting more easily accessible, which have since partially or fully become permanent. Delaware is currently embroiled in a legal fight over whether it can implement early and mail voting changes this election cycle as well.

The South, with its history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, has long lagged behind when it comes to voting access. The CEIR data shows that, although some states have slowly started expanding options for voters, generally it is still the most difficult region for voters to cast a ballot.

As options nationwide have become more widely available, voters have also responded by taking advantage.

In the 2000 election, 86% of voters voted at a polling place on Election Day, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In 2020, during the pandemic, that number dropped to less than 31% of voters. It went back up in 2022, to roughly half of the electorate, but was still in line with the two-decade trend toward more ballots being cast early.

...in reality, Becker says, more voting options actually make elections more secure and less susceptible to malicious activity or even human error.

"If there were a problem, if there were a cyber event, if there were a malfunction, if there were bad weather, if there were traffic, if there were was a power outage, you could think of all kinds of circumstances. ... The more you spread voting out over a series of days and over multiple modes, the less likely it's going to impact voters," he said...

-via NPR, March 19, 2024

[nando161mando]

Georgia Democrats trying to block several candidates, including De la Cruz/PSL from ballot

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/georgia-democrats-kennedy-jill-stein-presidential-ballot-election

[whenweallvote]

With 577,971 signatures, abortion is officially on the ballot in Arizona this November! According to Arizona for Abortion Access, this ballot measure has the most signatures validated for a citizens initiative in state history. 🙌

Voters in as many as 11 states will vote on reproductive health-related measures this fall. ​​Your vote is your voice and your power. Make sure you are registered and ready to vote right now at weall.vote/register.