Parties that wish to appear on the Georgia statewide ballot in 2008 are permitted to start circulating their statewide petition, effective April 8, 2007. The law permits the statewide party petition to circulate during the 15 months prior to the deadline. The petition requires 44,089 signatures. A trap for unsuspecting parties is the Georgia law regarding notary publics. Georgia petitions must be notarized. If a notary himself or herself circulates the petition (even a single sheet), then all of that individual’s notarization work is invalid. This trap was responsible for the failure of the Constitution Party’s 1996 Georgia statewide petition, and also for that year’s Natural Law Party petition. Each of them did the difficult work of collecting almost 50,000 raw signatures, only to have all that work wasted, because in each case a Notary Public who signed off on a large share of the signatures had himself or herself also circulated a few sheets.

The Libertarian Party is already on the statewide Georgia ballot. The Georgia Green Party is about to hold a state convention, which will serve as a kickoff for its own petition. The statewide petition need not carry the names of any candidates; it is simply a petition to qualify the party for statewide ballot status.