This is the prime season for state legislators to decide what bills they will be introducing next year. In some states, legislators can only introduce a fairly small number of bills, and in some states all bills must be introduced in the next three months.
It is especially important that bills be introduced in the states where the ballot access laws are so restrictive that only the Democratic and Republican Parties are now qualified. These states are Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington. Also, in Georgia, the Libertarian Party is qualified for statewide office only, not district or county office. And in Connecticut, several minor parties are ballot-qualified for some partisan offices but not others.
However, it should be noted that the Maryland Green Party will probably be ballot-qualified in a month or so, since it has almost finished its 2008 party petition; the same is true for the North Dakota Libertarian and Constitution Parties. Therefore, the list of “bad” states above will soon be 17 states, not 19. Also note that since the Arkansas and Ohio petition procedures were declared unconstitutional recently, state legislature in those states must address the question.
Please contact me in New York if you have ballot access issues. I will be mounting a Citizen Lobbying campaign in Albany. I hope to crack the door of every legislator.
A model bill or an issues list would certainly be helpful.
Get a valid email for me from the LNC directory at lp.org
Interesting, the ND Libertarian web page has been down for some time and I have not heard about any party registration petiton drive.
Did the package come back to you? If not, do you think I could send out the cash and have you send a nother copy to my current address. The post office has been no help.
Hopefully, LPNM will sucessfully lobby the legislature to eliminate New Mexico’s double-petition requirement.
I’ve been thinking of something bigger: A consututional amendment to allow all paties to determine their own method of nominating candidates and requiring them to bear the full cost thereof.
But the more I think about, the more I want to go even further, requiring all elections to be non-partisan, with parties having no “official” standing or “official” role in elections.
Joseph Knight- be happy with something that is attainable (elimination of dual petition requirement and perhaps a lessening of signatures required) rather than asking for that which is unattainable. The legislature will only do what is comfortable. If pushed too far they will do nothing or perhaps worse.
I think a class-action lawsuit against the fcc for licensing the public’s airwaves to news stations that don’t cover 3rd party candidates equally would be nice too, but, like the constitutional amendment mentioned above, it probably isn’t practical at this time.
Richard; please list out the needed changes in Iowa?
Interesting, the ND Libertarian web page has been down for some time and I have not heard about any party registration petiton drive.
Andy, Mark and Gary got all the ND 2008 LP and CP sigs back in August-September.