In April 2022, Tennessee State House member John Mark Windle, who had been elected as a Democrat continuously starting in 1990, filed for re-election as an independent candidate. No Democrat filed to run against him. He is a former Majority Leader of the House. See this story.
On June 6, Perry Johnson, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to be put back on the August 2 primary ballot. Johnson v Michigan Board of State Canvassers, e.d., 2:22cv-11232. The issue is whether the state used due process when it invalidated his petition. He needed 15,000 signatures and he submitted 23,193. But the state determined that many of his petitioners committed fraud, and invalidated all of the signatures collected by those individuals, without checking each signature. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news. Here is the Complaint.
The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Goldsmith.
On May 31, David Gill filed his opening brief in the Seventh Circuit in Gill v Scholz, 22-1653. This is the case that challenges the Illinois 5% petition requirement for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, for U.S. House. This is the oldest pending ballot access case in the nation.
According to this story, the Wisconsin Democratic Party has filed a challenge to the primary ballot access of Tim Michels, a leading Republican candidate for Wisconsin Governor. Candidates for statewide office in Wisconsin need 2,000 signatures to get on a primary ballot. The challenge says he didn’t list his address properly.
A similar problem kept the Green Party off the presidential ballot in Wisconsin in 2020.
The 2022 Wisconsin primaries are in August. Three other Republicans are also running in the primary for Governor. Thanks to Michael Drucker for this news.
This news story describes the phenomenon of insincere candidates running in the open primary of the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party. The story would be better if it mentioned the alternative idea of letting small ballot-qualified parties nominate by convention, which is policy in 17 states.
On May 29, at the close of the Libertarian Party’s national convention in Sparks, Nevada, newly-elected chair Angela McArdle announced that she is pregnant for the first time.
There have been pregnant governors, and pregnant members of Congress, but this is probably the first such event for the chair of a nationally-organized political party, at least a party that had as many as 1,000 attendees present.