Third-party update, Sept. 13

The Fifth Circuit has officially screwed third parties in Texas, upholding a district court ruling on Tex-ass's 2019 ballot access law. (BAN link has the court opinion, or click here.)

It not only upheld the district court's opinion, it overturned the one ray of sunshine in that opinion. The district court had ruled that the state had to accept electronic signatures and electronic ballot access petitions. That, too got tossed.

Thanks, Drew Springer.

Interestingly, as of the time I posted this Friday afternoon, neither the Green Party nor the Libertarian Party of Texas has it on Twitter. And, after I tagged both parties, as of Friday night, neither had it on their websites. Texas Greens also didn't have it on their Facebook.

You know, if you are going to complain about vote suppression, at least publicize something like this in a timely fashion.

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Strange that part of why Brainworm Bobby dropped out (he did, the "suspended" is just to remain eligible for any dribblings of federal matching funds) was because his campaign was reportedly getting tight on cash and I presume his Veep Nicole Shanahan wouldn't loan it any more. (Or "loan" it. I presume she's not dumb enough to have considered that a literal loan.)

But? He has money to sue Michigan (and lose), Wisconsin, North Carolina (and lose), and counting to get back off the ballot. He also wound up losing New York to get ON the ballot, which he was still pursuing.

Those lawyers aren't cheap.

Well, Wasted Space is a lawyer himself, so, like Tricky Dick, these are lawyer's lawyers.

 And, as of Sept. 6, Wasted Space officially and truly withdrew, other than sucking on the FEC teat for the rest of the third quarter, by asking all his voters in all states to vote for Trump. Nuña the Nutter will still refuse to eat any crow, but, he gets more and more ridicule at BAN all the time from others besides me.

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As of last week, while it appears the PSL will still fall short of being eligible to have 270 electors elected, it's still above 200, a first, per Wiki. That's far and away the best of parties to the left of the Greens.

As I've hammered on, off and on, for months, the Socialist Party USA has been basically invisible this election cycle. Per the link above, as of early September, it was only on the ballot by name in one state and write-in for Bill Stodden in eight others. That puts them behind the Trots of the Socialist Equality Party and the cultists of the Socialist Workers party, who somehow are ahead of the SEP.

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Independent Political Report has a roundup of nonduopoly candidates' responses to the duopoly parties' presidential debate.

Related? Free and Equal Elections Foundation has reportedly invited seven candidates, including the two duopoly ones, to its fourth debate. (Nuña the Nutter raised all three Cerberus heads in a comment there — racism, sexism and Islamophobia.) Let's see if that holds. Claudia de la Cruz didn't make the invite cut for the third one, meaning there was nobody to the left of Jill Stein, which she loved.

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Robert Kraus is the interim head of the Liberal Party, the Libertarian break-off for the non-Mises Mice.

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If you ever wondered how much state legal systems can be biased against third-party and independent candidates, Georgia is the new poster child, per Ballot Access News.

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Not all third parties, or even all third parties of the alleged left, oppose Israel's genocide in Gaza. Learn the cultist story behind the pseudo-Trots of the Socialist Workers Party.

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The Texas Trib had a semi-failure (shock me) in discussing independent voters.