This story contains a list of each state, showing the legal deadline for election officials to certify the election results. Scroll down to the bottom. The list was compiled by the National Association of State Election Directors.
The state with the latest legal deadline is Arkansas, with a deadline in mid-December. Just because a state has a legal deadline does not always mean that the work really gets completed by the legal deadline, but generally it does.
Here is a link to the U.S. Senate election returns for Minnesota. The Legal Marijuana Now Party polled 5.91%. Under the law, that means it is not only ballot-qualified in 2022, but in 2024 as well. In Minnesota, when a party polls 5%, it retains its qualified status for the next two elections.
The Grassroots – Legalize Cannabis Party also ran for U.S. Senate in Minnesota this year, and it polled 1.78%. But because it got over 5% for a statewide race in 2018, it will still be on the 2022 ballot. Thanks to Dave Cummings for this news.
On November 3, the voters of five cities approved ballot measures that will institute ranked choice voting, for elections for city officers. The cities are Eureka, California; Albany, California; Boulder, Colorado; Bloomington, Minnesota; and Minnetonka, Minnesota.
In the 2020 presidential election, the average state had six presidential candidates on the ballot. The median state had five candidates. The average is somewhat distorted because Colorado and Vermont each had 21 candidates, so the median is probably a more meaningful figure.
Twelve states only had three candidates on the ballot: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Virginia.
If you intend to ask any state legislator to introduce a bill to ease ballot access, and you are in one of the twelve states that only had three, that is ammunition for the idea that your state is too difficult.
In the early Democratic presidential primaries, every state had at least 12 Democrats on the presidential primary ballot, and that didn’t cause any “voter confusion” problems. The same is true of early Republican presidential primaries in 2016.
Ballot access laws that keep worthy candidates off the ballot don’t only injure those candidates. They injure the voters who would like to vote for such candidates. Democratic Party legislators like to think that the Democratic Party is a champion of voting rights, so if you are communicating with a Democratic state legislator, make this point.
In the 2020 presidential election, support from 568,289 voters was required to get on the ballot for president (as an independent candidate, or the nominee of a new or previously unqualified party) in all 51 jurisdictions.
That figure uses the easiest method to get on the ballot in each state. In some states, the independent procedure is the easiest method. In others, the new party procedure is easier. The calculation uses the easier method. For California, it was deemed “easier” to get 196,964 signatures on a petition, than to persuade 68,672 individuals to register into a new party. Although 196,964 is a far larger number than 68,672, that is counterbalanced by the relative ease of getting a petition signature versus membership in a new party.
For Florida, the calculation uses a figure of 29, because a new party can become recognized with no petition, and can then be on for president if it has at least 29 registered members who become that party’s presidential electors. This year, Florida did not enforce its law requiring National Committee status from the Federal Election Commission. It didn’t enforce it in 2008 or 2012 either, but it did enforce it in 2016.
The number of supporters (mainly petition signers) of 568,289 is the lowest since 1968, when the number was 545,878. The 1968 number is somewhat ambiguous because it uses an Ohio figure of zero, because the US Supreme Court struck down Ohio’s petition requirements in 1968 and put the American Independent Party on the ballot even though it had not complied with the law. The Court said the Socialist Labor Party was also entitled to declaratory relief against Ohio, but that the SLP could not be on the ballot because it had asked for relief from the U.S. Supreme Court too late.
The 2024 requirements will be far, far worse than they were in 2020, if activists do not seek ballot access relief between now and 2024. The turnout in 2020 was so large that the states in which the requirements are dependent on turnout will have much higher requirements.
W. James Antle III, Politics Editor for the Washington Examiner, has this story on Libertarian Party showings in the 2020 election, although he doesn’t mention the party’s having won a legislative election in Wyoming. Thanks to Gene Berkman for the link.