New Hampshire election law says anyone can be on a presidential primary ballot who pays a fee of $1,000 and fills out a Declaration of Candidacy. However, the Declaration of Candidacy since 1983 has said, “I am a registered member of the (fill in the blank) party.”
The literal language of the New Hampshire requirement that the candidate be a registered member of the party has never been applied, because 20 states don’t have registration by party. Walter Mondale, the Democratic nominee in 1984, was not a registered Democrat because Minnesota has never had registration by party (and, if it did, Mondale would have been a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party). Bill Clinton was not a registered Democrat for the same reasons; neither was Al Gore. Among Republicans, neither George H. W. Bush nor George W. Bush was a registered Republican because Texas doesn’t have registration by party.
So, in practice, the affidavit doesn’t mean what it says; what it does mean is that the candidate must hold himself out as a member of the party. See this story. It will be interesting to see how Senator Bernie Sanders handles this situation. Even though he has announced that he intends to run in Democratic presidential primaries, he has not said that he a Democrat, and he lists himself in the Congressional Directory as an independent. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
How about fill the blank with —
Liberal – Progressive – Socialist – Democratic – COMMUNIST – STATIST ???
Super Easy to be a New Age LOOTER — with the income and assets of OTHER folks.
Senator Sanders says that he will be running for President as an “Independent Democrat.”
I don’t think the Courts would rule against Sanders if the New Hampshire Secretary of State refuses to qualify him if he does not declare as a member of the Democratic Party. Also, any official effort to keep him from qualifying could backfire against Hillary Clinton – as it could appear efforts are being carried out to keep Sanders off the ballot. Being a member of a party is actually a state of mind. Sanders could easily state that for this election he is joining the Democratic Party. That should settle the matter.
Given the precedents cited in the post by the knowledgeable editor, I think he’ll be OK although I was thinking that even in the Arizona presidential preference primary, which I entered twice, in which all you had to do was file a notarized one-page paper, it did ask you to fill in the party you were registered with. So when I filed for the 2008 Democratic primary, I made sure I was registered to vote as a Democrat, and in 2012, to run in the Green primary, I made sure I was registered as a Green. Of course, with the ease of online registration, someone could go back and forth every day and change their registration from party to party in Arizona. You can probably be a Democrat at 10 am, a Republican at 11 am, a Libertarian at noon, etc. I’m not sure if any other states make it so easy to constantly switch party preference online.
P.S. And unlike the Arizona paper registration system, which the appeals court just upheld, online you can register with all minor parties that are on the ballot. My county still allows people to register with the Americans Elect Party even though it is no longer ballot-qualified.
The Bernie Sanders Democratic Primary campaign is going to have an effect similar in 2016 to what the campaigns of Dennis Kucinich did for the Dems in 2004 and 2008 and what the campaigns of Ron Paul did for the GOP in 2008 and 2012. It’s going to be another campaign nominally standing up for political diversity while in reality just indoctrinating a new round of voters into major party politics, and blocking smaller parties from seeing new interest.
The Texas Democratic Party kept Dennis Kucinich off the presidential primary ballot in Texas in 2008, because he wouldn’t sign an oath to support the party nominee.
Kucinich also did not sign the pledge in 2004, but in 2008 he made it more obvious for crossing it off.
Richard Grayson: Aren’t you a little uncomfortable using an emblem for your replies, which has the word HITLER on it? Can’t make what the rest of it reads, but surely you are not a Nazi? I use the super-embossed center of the Alabama State Flag. In fact, I wish Alabama’s state flag had broader bars on them – similar to what my emblem illustrates. I think the puny diagonal bars on the current Alabama Flag are so weakly looking.
The difference between Sanders’ situation and Mondale’s, Clinton’s, Gore’s, Bush 41’s, and Bush 43’s is that the latter five had all run for office as Democrats or Republicans and identified themselves while in office as Democrats or Republicans. Sanders has repeatedly been elected as an independent every time he has run for office in the last 25 years.
If Sanders wants to declare himself a Democrat and announces that he should be listed as a Democratic senator as opposed to an independent, then NH wouldn’t have any cause that I can think of to deny him access to the Democratic primary ballot. But if he continues to assert he is an independent until the primary filing deadline, it seems plausible to me that NH could turn him down for a spot on the Democratic ballot.