On April 1, the Nevada Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee heard testimony on SB 292, the bill to double the petition requirement for new parties and to add a severe distribution requirement. The sponsor is Senator Roberta Lange, a former state chair of the Nevada Democratic Party. If the bill passed, the party petition would rise from 13,557 signatures to 27,114. The bill also moves the petition deadline from mid-June to early June.

No one testified for the bill, and representatives of the Constitution, Transhumanist, Libertarian, and Peoples Party testified against it. The committee will vote sometime in the future. During the hearing, Senator Lange said, “A person can vote for anyone they choose”, and the Senate Majority Leader, also a Democrat, praised the idea of giving more choices to voters. However, they weren’t referring to the ballot access parts of the bill; they were talking about the part of the bill that adds a straight-ticket device.

Senator Lange showed that she has not researched the ballot access laws of other states. When she presented her bill, she said that that Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina all require petitions to form a new party to be signed by 2% of the voters. Actually Kentucky requires 5,000 signatures, which is .33% of the last presidential vote cast; Missouri requires 10,000, which is .33% of the last presidential vote; North Carolina is .25% of the last gubernatorial vote; and Pennsylvania is 5,000 signatures, which is .07% of the last presidential vote. However, no one pointed this out in the hearing.