Yesterday's news that Ron Paul took in $4 million prompted Steven Stark to speculate that this means that, should Paul run as a third party candidate, he could be a viable force.

Steven and I discussed this publicly last month. He wrote a column arguing that the GOP would be devastated by a third party run. I didn't disagree with this outright, but I did assert that it remains to be seen whether Paul could obtain a non-negligible share of the vote (and I argued against expecting a religious right candidate to be able to do that).

At the time, I received an email from somebody who noted that Paul could run into trouble with "sore loser" laws. Those are laws that prohibit a candidate who runs for a party's nomination for a given office in the primary from running for the same office with another party's nomination in the general election. I had heard about this for the first time last year - as it was what might have kept Joy Padgett from running in OH 18. She had tried, but failed, to win the GOP's nomination for Lieutenant Governor. And so, there was, for a time, a question as to whether she could run as the Republican in OH 18.

Padgett was ultimately allowed to run as the GOP nominee in OH 18 because she was running for a different office. Paul would be running for the same office, and so I wondered whether this reader was on to something.

It turns out that he was, but not to a great extent. I did some digging and found this article from Ballot Access News, whose relevant points I will quote here.

If Paul fails to win the Republican presidential nomination, he could then seek the Libertarian nomination (which he would be virtually certain to obtain) and run in November as the Libertarian nominee. John Anderson established the precedent in most states that "sore loser" laws do not apply to presidential candidates. John Anderson ran in two-thirds of the 1980 Republican presidential primaries, and he also won a place on the November 1980 ballots as an independent candidate in all 50 states. In some of the states in which Anderson happened not to run in the 1980 Republican presidential primary, there is still a precedent that "sore loser" laws don't apply to president, because others set such precedents. These include Lyndon LaRouche (who ran in Democratic primaries and then as an independent in 1984, 1988 and 1992) and David Duke (who ran in Democratic presidential primaries in 1988 and then ran in November 1988 as the Populist Party nominee).

Only four states maintain that their "sore loser" laws apply to president: South Dakota, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. After LaRouche won in court against Ohio in 1992, Ohio amended its "sore loser" law in 1993 to specifically apply to presidential candidates. No precedents have been set in Mississippi or South Dakota. In Texas, unfortunately, in 1996 the Constitution Party filed a lawsuit against Texas to get a ruling that the "sore loser" law doesn't apply to president. The federal judge who got the case, James Nowlin, refused to enjoin Texas' interpretation that the "sore loser" law does apply to president. The denial of injunctive relief is reported as US Taxpayers Party v Garza, 924 F Supp 71 (1996).

However, the opinion does not discuss the fact that the true candidates in November are running for presidential elector, not president. A presidential candidate's name is not listed on the November ballot in his or her role as a candidate. Instead, the name is an identifier for specific slates of candidates for presidential elector.

Of the four states where sore loser laws are still in at least nominal effect for presidential elections, only Ohio is a swing state. And even in those four states, Paul may be able to get on the ballot. So, by and large, it looks as though Paul would be relatively unimpeded should he decide to run as the Libertarian Party nominee (though I do not know nearly enough about Libertarian Party politics to know whether Paul would be "virtually certain" to obtain the nomination if he sought it). I still think there are other potential impediments to a Paul third party candidacy - but it appears ballot access is not one of them.