North Dakota Libertarians Take Steps to Run a Full Slate of Statewide Candidates in 2016

The North Dakota Libertarian Party held a state convention on November 7 and endorsed many candidates for statewide office. Technically those candidates aren’t the party nominees yet, but because the party has endorsed them, their names will go on the June primary ballot automatically. The party wants to run a full slate for all the statewide offices. Two offices, including Governor, are still not filled and the party will hold a later endorsement convention for those two offices when candidates are recruited. See this story.

The party polled enough votes in 2014 for Secretary of State to be on the 2016 ballot automatically. However, in 2016 the party is required to poll 5% for President or Governor; none of the other offices count. The party will probably try to persuade the legislature to expand the list of offices that count toward party status.

The party also recruited a candidate for the state legislature. No minor party candidate for the state legislature has been able to get on the November ballot since 1976. This is because the law requires parties that wish to place nominees on the November ballot for legislature to persuade approximately 10% of all the primary voters to choose that party’s primary ballot. North Dakota has open primaries. It is unheard of for a minor party primary ballot to be chosen by such a high proportion of primary voters. Even the Minnesota Reform Party in 1998 only had 3% of the primary voters choosing a Reform Party primary ballot, even though Jesse Ventura was on that ballot.

North Dakota Representative Corey Mock introduced a bill in the legislature this year to repeal the primary participation barrier, but it lost on the floor by 37-55. It is believed Mock wants to re-introduce the bill in 2016. Other states that once had primary participation laws, such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma, have all eliminated those laws. The Minnesota primary participation law was struck down by the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2004. The Oklahoma legislature repealed its primary participation law in 1943 after the Republican Party had failed it in 1942.


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North Dakota Libertarians Take Steps to Run a Full Slate of Statewide Candidates in 2016 — 1 Comment

  1. I James Ogle [Republican] was a candidate for California Governor with the Green Party, running on a platform of state voting reform through pure proportional representation (PR) in 1994, and we were fortunate to unite the Green and Environmentalist Party candidates for US President, and then elected a virtual team of 125 candidates for US President from 25 different political parties/categories in 1996 under the “First USA Parliament Election”.

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