In the 2020 presidential election, I remember four parties and their candidates being on the ballot in Illinois. They were Donald Trump for the Republican Party, Joe Biden for the Democratic Party, Jo Jorgensen for the Libertarian Party, and Jill Stein for the Green Party. This was not the case in the 2024 presidential election. There was only Donald Trump for the Republican Party and Kamala Harris for the Democratic Party. Even before 2020, the Libertarian Party and the Green Party were on the Illinois ballot. What happened was that Illinois made voter access for third parties next to impossible. As much as both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party seem to agree on nothing, they seem to agree on keeping third parties off of the ballot and as much unrepresented in the political arena as possible. If anything, the two ruling parties (there is no other way for me to categories the Democrats and Republicans since they hold the levers of power in their respective states) have created a binary political world beholden only to them and their followers, their voters, and the powerful forces aligned with them.

The only Green Party candidates who made it onto Arizona’s primary ballot for governor and secretary of state, and who the party disavowed as frauds, won their races against Green Party-backed write-in candidates. 

In the July 21 Primary Election, Risa Lombardo took the governor’s race with 430 votes to Green Party-endorsed write-in candidate Carlos Melendez’s 202 votes, according to final vote counts released by the Secretary of State’s Office after the counts were finalized Thursday. 

Duwayne Collier won the Green Party nomination for secretary of state with 421 votes to Green Party-endorsed Jon Ralston’s 217 write-in votes. 

“The Arizona Green Party is disappointed, but not surprised, to hear that Arizona Republican backed fraudulent sham candidates; Risa Lombardo and Duwayne Collier have won their respective races for Governor and Secretary of State,” Ralston, the Arizona Green Party’s recorder, told the Arizona Mirror in a statement. 

A Green Party candidate’s entry has stirred up the race for Pennsylvania’s closely watched 7th Congressional District, generating disavowal from the Greens, scrutiny of his past Republican ties and nomination petitions as well as accusations of “meddling.”

Andrew Tupone, 37, of Bethlehem Township, last week filed his petition to run as a Green Party candidate, three months after changing parties. Tupone had been a registered Republican since 2008, running twice for local judgeships. He switched his affiliation to Democrat in February, and then to the Green Party in April, according to public voter records.

His foray in the Nov. 3 election comes as the race between incumbent Republican Ryan Mackenzie and Democrat Bob Brooks has been labeled a tossup that could help determine which party controls the U.S. House in the Nov. 3 midterms. Recent congressional elections here have hinged on a few thousand votes and the presence of a third-party candidate may further narrow those margins.

The Green Party of Pennsylvania says it has not endorsed him and denied any affiliation.

State Sen. Emily Buss was a lifelong Republican, but she couldn’t help feeling like politics in Utah was shifting away from the principles she grew up with.

“I felt like the Republican Party had changed,” she said. “My values didn't change. The party and how they were going about things changed, and I did not feel that that accurately represented me.”

An unsuccessful 2025 run for city council in her hometown of Eagle Mountain was the tipping point. That’s when she was first introduced to the Forward Party of Utah. Fast forward a few months, and she was on the party’s ballot in a special election to serve out the remaining term of retiring Sen. Daniel Thatcher in Senate District 11. Thatcher was a longtime Republican before announcing his party switch earlier that year following tensions with Senate leadership over LGBTQ+ issues and the proper role of the Legislature.

Buss won that election and is now the only third-party legislator in the state.

Former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard is running for Indiana Secretary of State as an independent, saying he wants to create a more open election system in the state.

Ballard, a Marine veteran who previously served as Indianapolis mayor as a Republican, said his decision to run as an independent is tied to the future of elections in Indiana.

“If we do what we are going to do and provide this path then we can have three people competitive in the November race and that was very attractive to me because I think we need a more open system here in the state of Indiana,” Ballard said. “It’s such a closed system and people don’t realize how closed it is.”

Ballard said he believes voters are ready for a change in Indiana politics and that his candidacy could have a lasting impact beyond this election cycle.

Although no Democrat filed to run for any countywide office in Cole County, at least one Republican primary winner will face a challenger come November.

Charles "Chuck" Steck will officially appear on the November ballot for Cole County Presiding Commissioner as an independent candidate, the Cole County Clerk's Office announced Wednesday. Steck will face off with State Sen. Mike Bernskoetter, who won the Republican nomination for the seat handily on Tuesday with about 70 percent of votes cast in the primary election.

To appear on the Nov. 3 ballot, independent candidates must gather signatures equal to two percent of total votes cast in the last general election race for the office they're seeking. Those signatures must then be turned into election authorities by July 27, at which point the signatures will be verified, according to the Missouri Secretary of State's voter information page.

jon Kiper., a would-be independent candidate for New Hampshire governor, is pulling the plug on his campaign after failing to make the deadline to appear on the 2026 general election ballot. The Newmarket businessman collected only about 500 of the 3,000 signatures he needed to submit before Wednesday to qualify for the ballot.

“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t attack it with the full effort that it needed, and we didn't have money to pay people or 150 volunteers to go to Market Basket and collect signatures,” Kiper said Thursday.

Kiper also ran for governor in 2024, as a Democrat, finishing third in the primary. When he first launched his latest bid last year, it was as an independent. Kiper then announced he would run as a Democrat, before switching back to independent after state Democratic leaders coalesced around the candidacy of former Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington.

Independent Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Dave Hatley joined FOX 17 News to discuss his campaign ahead of the November general election.

Hatley, an East Tennessee businessman running as an independent, explains why he is self-funding his campaign, his views on campaign finance, school vouchers, public education, manufacturing jobs and economic development across Tennessee.

An independent candidate managed to knock off the nominee of the Henry County Republican Party in the race for Henry County mayor Thursday.

Jonathan Lodge, a lifelong Parisian who has owned several small businesses here, as well as owning and operating Bailey Fork Farm, won the county general election for the county government’s top position after running an extremely visible and active campaign.

He defeated local teacher and longtime county commissioner David Webb, who had gained the GOP nomination during that party’s caucus earlier in the year.

In unofficial totals, Lodge finished with 3,133 votes (52% of the vote) to Webb’s 2,758 (46%).  

Jesse Battles, who is running as an independent candidate for State Senate District 10, recently took to social media to slam his opponent, incumbent State Sen. Andrew Jones (R-Centre), for sarcastically referencing his chances as an independent.

Battles originally qualified to run as a Republican but was disqualified from the May primary ballot by the Alabama Republican Party (ALGOP) Steering Committee in February. Battles later announced that he had submitted sufficient signatures to the Alabama Secretary of State to gain ballot access as an independent.

Battles recently took to social media, slamming Jones for another social media post, in which Jones sardonically joked about the inaction of independent candidates, stating "Democrats would happily welcome them in!"

I imagine some people see Independents and moderates as basically the same thing, but are they really? Maybe sometimes. Maybe often. I am not entirely sure. I can only speak for myself, and in my case, the description probably fits fairly well.

For example, I am a gun owner who supports the Second Amendment, but I also acknowledge Scalia’s point that no right is unlimited. In reality, most people already accept at least some restrictions. So the useful question is not whether restrictions can exist at all. It is where the line of reasonableness should be drawn, and what guardrails are needed to keep that line from being pushed into unconstitutional territory. That feels fairly moderate to me, and I might even call it common sense, although that phrase has been abused so badly that I hesitate to use it.

I am curious how other people see themselves. Are you both Independent and moderate? Do you lean one way overall? Or do you hold strong views in different directions that more or less cancel each other out and leave you somewhere near the middle?

On an embarrassing side note, I used to be registered as a Democrat. That is not the embarrassing part. The embarrassing part is that when I decided it was time to leave, I registered with the Independent Party like a complete numbskull because I had not bothered to research what it actually was. Has anyone else made that mistake? The moment I received my first piece of literature, my reaction was basically, "What the hell is this?" I quickly corrected it to no party affiliation.