Molly O’Leary, Chief of the Pennsylvania Division of Voter Registration, has said that Pennsylvania elections officials will continue to tally voters who are registered in the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties. These parties ceased to be parties under the Pennsylvania definition of “political party”, in November 2006. They lost their status because they did not poll as much as 2% of the winning candidate’s vote in any statewide race in 2006. They failed the vote test because their nominees were kept off the ballot.
This will be the first time that Pennsylvania elections officials have agreed to tally the number of registrants in any parties that no longer meet the definition of “political party”. It is possible that Pennsylvania made this decision because courts have ruled that unqualified parties to have a right to the tally. These decisions are from New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Iowa.
Updated Libertarian Party Registration Statistics
I’ve just updated the numbers on my Libertarian
Party Voter Registration Statistics page.
The number I’ve come up with for the 21 states that currently tally the number of registered Libertarians is 234,094.
Richard Winger’s total for these same 21 states was 235,500 as of Nov. 2006. My number contains more up to date totals.
The total number is 253,114 when you add the states (Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, West Virginia) that until a few years ago tallied registered Libertarians,
giving one a general theoretical number of potential Libertarian voters in the 25 states that tally, and have recently tallied, registered Libertarians.
To see the most recent tally of other third party registered voters visit this page by Richard Winger of Ballot Access News.
In Freedom & Liberty,
Ryan Brennan
http://www.thirdpartynews.net