On December 14, the Maine Secretary of State converted all 5,500 registered Libertarians to registered independents. The Maine Secretary of State had been told that the party intends to file a lawsuit soon, arguing that it is unconstitutional for states to automatically change voter registration just because the party goes off the ballot. Only a handful of states have that policy. In five states, courts have ruled that voters have a right to be registered into unqualified parties: Colorado, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma.
If the Maine Libertarians could keep their registrations, then the party would be back on the ballot. It lost its qualified status recently because it didn’t have at least 10,000 registrants who actually cast a ballot in November 2018. But the law says a new party can become qualified if it has 5,000 registrants. So if the party still had its registrants, it could re-qualify as a “new” party.
Maine should switch to Top 2. If they wanted they could use RCV for the primaries, to choose the two finalists. This is totally consistent with the constitution.
Under the current system of segregated partisan primaries, it is hard for minor party candidates to qualify for the primary. The lone Libertarian candidate had to convince voters to change their enrollment to Libertarian before signing his petition, merely to get the bare minimum of signatures. The petition was challenged because one voter dated his signature with his birthday which was in the same month. The candidate fortunatel had taken a picture of the application and had a datestanp from his phone. Even then the Democrat lawyer flatulated that the phone could have been tampered with.
In that one district, voting in the Libertarian primary was easy as One (period). In all the other districts it was even easier. With no primary, there is no reason to register as a Libertarian. With few enrolled voters, the party is disqualified.
Without partisan primaries it is easier to qualify for the ballot. Ballot access barriers are to keep outsiders out. Insiders don’t want to make it hard for themselves. Maine could eliminate partisan registration altogether, ans simply let candidates choose a slogan (“Libertarian, ayup”).
I’m sure the Maine Green Independent Party is elated: https://www.mainegreens.org/
NO primaries.
PR and AppV – pending Condorcet — RCV done correctly.
The United Coalition USA is able to work with any scenario and the Green Independent Party of Maine welcomes the newly categorized Independents to our team.
The Green Independent Party of Maine will be coordinating in 2019 and our top ranked names are already trying to make good music together with the Jennifer Walters [Green] of NYC and James Ogle [One] united in 2020.
Bring the horse to the herd in 2020:
Go Herd/Ogle [Libertarian/One] in 2020
http://www.usparliament.org/ucc-p7-usa.html
When a party fails the vote test to retain ballot access in Oklahoma the state does change everyone registered with that party to Independent but then anyone can re-register with the party that went off the ballot for the following four years. At this link you can see numbers on alternative party registration in the state: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P_7QtBd2AVu75rjFMTmLfg7d0UV9BEvSuXfN7GrlklE/edit?usp=sharing
You can see where registration numbers of parties that lost ballot status in 2000 and in 2012 fell but began rising again.
If I am not mistaken, in West Virginia, when Libertarians lost access after the 2000 election, their voters were simply reclassified as “Other Party: Libertarian.” Then, when they regained access in 2012, all of those were removed from the “Other Party” category and placed in their own. KISS.
Richard, which states have “Other Party” with a descriptor available as a voter selection?
Texas converts every registration to unaffiliated after an election year.
NO party registrations = PURGE lists
ZERO learned from Civil WAR I and Stalin/Hitler regimes ???
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Party hacks can have internal member lists and have mail/internet votes for stuff —
or even show up at JR courthouses for group purge photos.
Time for a lawsuit!