The Florida Green Party sued one of its own state legislative candidates back on September 24, 2008, to gain information on whether she paid her own filing fee, or whether possibly Republican Party campaign consultants may have paid it. A hearing is set for January 6, 2009, to decide if the party has a right to depose the candidate on how her filing fee was paid. The case is King v Roman, Pasco Co., 51-2008-ca-8091.
Five Greens ran for the Florida legislature this year, and none of them were individuals known to the Green Party. Since the legislature changed the law in 2007 to provide that all qualified parties nominate by primary, of course there was nothing to prevent any voter in the state from registering into the Green Party and filing in its primary. The Green Party suspects that the five legislative candidates who ran this year were all recruited by people associated with Republican Party campaigns.
In Minnesota we have two basic groups for parties; major and minor.
If you are legally eligible to be a candidate you are free to file for said office as a rep of any major party, as long as you promise to vote for a majority of that party’s candidates in the election and pay a fee (waived with signatures). We have three major party, DFL, GOP and IND. The Greens were a major party but lost it a few years back.
When we register to vote, we do not declare a party ID and our primaries are thus, “open”.
Minor parties basically petition individually as an Independent and can select a brief minor party name or appear as “Independent”.
I have often wondered if their it is common for some one to file for in a major party primary (IND) just to hurt the party itself or another party (DFL)?