The Tennessee bills to establish a category in the election law for qualified minor parties will be heard in Joint State & Local Government Committees on April 3. The bills are SB288 and HB626. They require a group that wishes to be a ballot-qualified party (and to nominate by convention) to submit a petition of 2,500 signatures.

Currently, Tennessee has no “qualified minor party” provision in its election law. Either a party is a qualified major party (which requires 45,254 signatures, if it didn’t poll 5% for president or governor at either of the last two elections), or it can’t appear on the ballot at all. No party other than the Democratic and Republican Parties has been qualified in Tennessee since 1972.