Maryland Libertarian Party Files Brief in Ballot Access Case

On March 11, the Maryland Libertarian Party filed this 24-page brief in Johnston v Lamone, 1:18cv-3988. This is the case on whether the Maryland law on how a party remains on the ballot, as applied to parties with more than 10,000 registered members, is constitutional. State law says the Libertarian Party must submit a petition of 10,000 signatures to get back on the ballot, even though the party has over 22,000 registered members. The party argues that the petition is meaningless, because the purpose of the petition is to show that at least 10,000 voters want the party on the ballot, and it is obvious that a party with 22,000 registered members already has shown that. The state argues that a Libertarian registrant might have registered Libertarian long ago and no longer cares about the party. This Libertarian brief says that argument is not persuasive.

The Baltimore Sun of March 21 gives a prominent display headline, and two photographs, to this letter to the editor from David Griggs. The letter argues that the existing law is irratioal.


Comments

Maryland Libertarian Party Files Brief in Ballot Access Case — 7 Comments

  1. Yeah, the argument isn’t persuasive. Since more than half of the registered Libertarians would have to be these supposedly-lackadaisical registrants, I am surprised that the state even offered such a specious response.

  2. Assuming that the recency argument was persuasive, shouldn’t a party then be able to reduce the number of signatures it is required to collect by the number of people who registered in the party over the last 2 years (assuming all collected signatures were from people who did not register in the party in the last 2 years.)

    In other words, if 3,000 people registered as Libertarian in the last two years, shouldn’t the burden be reduced from 10,000 to 7,000?

  3. Jim makes a good point above, and I agree with it.

    On a related note, I have been following LP voter registration. I noticed that Maryland no longer separately reports the number of registered Libertarians. I hope this doesn’t mean that existing Maryland LP registrants had their registrations canceled. Related to this, now that the numbers aren’t being separately reported on the state’s website, will there be a way to accurately identify how many are registered LP in the state (assuming they are still registered and they haven’t been converted to something like nonpartisan)? I’ve noticed that Iowa is doing this as well.

  4. INDIVIDUAL candidates are nominated/elected.

    EQUAL ballot access tests

    — regardless of ALL the MORON court cases since 1776

    — esp since 1968 Williams v Rhodes

    — which now looks like a STONE AGE op.

  5. If Maryland LP registration is anything like West Virginia’s, the growth is certainly exponential. I have WV’s data from the WVSOS website entered into a spreadsheet and the formula is y=696.1e^(0.021x) where the y-axis is voter registration and the x-axis is the date. The graph shows a definite curve. As of 11/1/1998, the LPWV started at 420 and as of 2/28 last month, they are at 6800.

  6. Obvious LIMITS on exponential stuff —

    national debt, populations per square mile, etc. — IE LIMIT – crash and collapse.

    See growth of computers in 1940s to now.

  7. TomP – Maryland is converting them to “Other-Libertarian”. The letter being sent out by the state says that if the LP lawsuit is successful they will be converted back to Libertarian. Here is the letter: https://imgur.com/EUhLRlt

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