Ballot Access News

The Massachusetts Libertarian Party has decided to place statewide Libertarian Party nominees on the 2012 general election ballot under the ballot label “Liberty” instead of Libertarian. The two statewide offices up in 2012 in Massachusetts are President and U.S. Senate. The Libertarian Party is not now ballot-qualified in Massachusetts.

The reason for the label “Liberty” instead of “Libertarian” in 2012, is that the party prefers not to be a ballot-qualified party during midterm years, but does prefer to be a ballot-qualified party during presidential years. In 2012, there is a fair possibility that the party’s nominee would receive over 3% for U.S. Senate, as it did in 2008 for U.S. Senate. If that happens in 2012, then the party would be ballot-qualified for 2014. But, it doesn’t want to be ballot-qualified in 2014, because then it would suffer from very difficult procedures for the party’s candidates to get on the party’s primary ballot.

So, if the Liberty Party polls enough votes in 2012 to be an qualified party in 2014 (which would be undesirable), the ballot-qualified Liberty Party could be abandoned in 2014. In 2014, the Libertarian Party (an unqualified party) would not be hampered with an unwanted primary ballot with difficult ballot access. 2014 petitions would be in the name of the Libertarian Party.

In 2014, it is extremely likely that the Libertarian Party would poll enough votes to become a ballot-qualified party for 2016. This is because Massachusetts has five statewide offices up in mid-term years, and it is easy for any minor party to poll 3% of the vote for the lesser offices, such as Treasurer, especially since the Republican Party sometimes doesn’t run a full slate for these lesser statewide offices. Having the party be ballot-qualified in 2016 would be desirable, because then the party would be on the ballot automatically for president in 2016, and also it would have its own presidential primary. Ballot access in presidential primaries in Massachusetts is very lenient; the party chair merely tells the Secretary of State whom to list.

All of this is very confusing. The election laws of Massachusetts are to blame. Those laws make primary ballot access extremely difficult for small ballot-qualified parties. A member of a small qualified party needs 10,000 signatures of party members or independents, in order to get on the party’s primary ballot. If the party only has, for example, 20,000 registered voters, the burden is severe. It would be desirable if minor party activists in Massachusetts would lobby for a more sensible policy on how candidates get on the primary ballot.

According to this story, South Carolina State Senator Shane Massey (R-Edgefield) plans to introduce a bill, preventing anyone who was ever convicted of a felony (or, perhaps, just certain felonies) from running for office. The U.S. Constitution sets forth the requirements for anyone to run for, or to hold, federal elected office. Generally state Constitutions also set forth the requirements for people to hold state elected office. Therefore, it is likely this proposed bill could only affect candidates for county and municipal office.

On January 10, two North Dakota Representatives, Corey Mock and Lee Kaldor, introduced HB 1299, to provide for a blanket primary. North Dakota now has open primaries. Currently, any voter is free to vote in any party’s primary ballot (and the choice of which party’s primary ballot is made in secret), but the voter must confine voting to the primary ballot of only one party.

The bill would change that, so that any voter could vote for any candidate in any party’s primary. This is the system that California used in 1998 and 2000, and for all special elections 1967 until 2010. It is also the system used by Washington state from 1934 until 2006, and it is the system used currently in Alaska (except that Republican candidates do not appear on the Alaska blanket primary ballot). Blanket primaries are not intrinsically unconstitutional, but they are unconstitutional as applied to any political party that doesn’t desire that kind of primary. They do not limit choices on the November ballot.

The authors are both Democrats. They say they are sympathetic to the pending lawsuit filed by the Libertarian Party against the law that says no one may be nominated for the legislature unless he or she receives approximately 130 votes in the primary. Not enough voters choose to vote in a minor party’s primary to make this goal reasonable. No minor party candidate for the legislature has managed to qualify since 1976. Of course, another solution would be to eliminate the minimum vote test. No other state has a minimum vote test for candidates whose names are printed on partisan primary ballots.