Ballot Access News has just learned that the Florida legislature this year altered nomination procedures for qualified minor parties. Under the old law, qualified parties with less than 5% of the voter registration nominated by convention. Under the new law (House Bill 537), all qualified parties nominate by primary. Florida has approximately 25 qualified parties.
Florida does not permit write-in votes in primaries. Florida also provides that no party will actually have primary ballots printed up for any particular office, unless more than a single candidate files for that office. Florida has very high filing fees. Therefore, in practice, it is unlikely that any qualified minor party will actually hold a primary, since it is unlikely that two members of the same minor party will actually file to run against each other for the same office.
The real difference the new law makes, is that any member of a qualified minor party is now free to seek (and most likely, obtain) the nomination of his or her party, just by filing for the “primary”. Thus, a qualified minor party whose state convention doesn’t wish to nominate anyone for a particular office has now lost the flexibility to make such a “none of the above” choice. On the other hand, qualified minor parties do have some protection, since no one may file for the primary of any party who has not been a member of that party for 6 months.
HB 537 did not alter eligibility for a presidential primary. As before, qualified minor parties may not have their own presidential primary. Thanks to Sean Concannon for this news.
Florida does have high filing fees, but section 99.095 provides for a petition process in lieu of the qualifying fees. Taking thise alternative petition route isn’t entirely free (section 99.097(4) requires candidates to pay $.10 per signature to pay for verification), but it is far cheaper than the otherwise applicable filing fees.
Actually, the state is not permitted to charge the 10 cent fee for that. The 11th circuit threw it out in Fulani v Krivanek, 973 F 2d 1539 (1992).
Interesting, because they’re still charging it:
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/publications/pdf/2008StQualHand.pdf
(see page 7) although they do waive the fee for “undue burden”.
There are only a few offices in Florida where it is practical to try to collect signatures.
For some city and minor county offices that only require 25 signatures petitioning is practical. There is only one state level office in Florida where petitioning is practical. That is for the position of state house member. in most districts it only takes less than 700 signatures but some like the one I am in take close to 1500 signatures. Filing Fee is about $1800.00
All other state level or Federal offices petitioning is cost prohibitive.
Last year I ran for Governor of Florida.
It would have taken 80,000 raw and 63,000+ confirmed signatures to get on the ballot. Compare that to either $5,400 or $8,300 to be on the ballot. Guess which one I choose.
New law (House Bill 537) only makes it HARDER for third parties.
Here’s how it will further burden third parties…
1.) Third parties will now need TWO candidates available to run for each Florida Office. So instead of needing 120 Qualified Candidates for State Representative third parties will need 204.
2.) TWICE as many signatures
The least amount 537 X 2 = (Now)1074
The most 1,333 X 2 = (Now)2666
OR
3.)TWICE the filing fees will be need to be raised.
4.) But perhaps worst of all, members of a third party will no longer be able to approve of the candidates they “officially” want to endorse under their party banner. Basically any “kook” can SAY they represent the Green, Libertarian, or Constitution Party, etc. after a mere 6 months of being voter registered under that party.
When one takes are close look at (House Bill 537) is sure seems to discourage third parties from running instead of helping them.