Louisiana, and approximately half the remaining states, will not let a candidate who qualifies under the independent candidate procedures list his or her party label on the ballot (except that Louisiana does permit labels for presidential candidates). In other words, the only party labels that ever appear on the Louisiana ballot (except for President) are the names of qualified parties. The ballot-qualified parties are Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, and Reform.
However, the Louisiana Secretary of State’s webpage recently started identifying the partisan registration of candidates who are not members of qualified parties. It has long been the policy that the state prints the word “Independent” on the ballot for candidates who are registered independents, and prints nothing for candidates are registered as members of a party that is not qualified. But, the Secretary of State’s webpage has gone back to elections starting in 2005, and identified the actual partisan registration of these “Other” candidates of the past. This will be useful to historians.
For example, in the 2007 gubernatorial election, a candidate named Belinda Alexandrenko was on the ballot with no label. But the webpage now shows that she was registered in the “Hope for America” Party. This improvement in the information on the Secretary of State’s webpage seems to have been caused by Randall Hayes, a Louisiana resident who always wanted to know which party these mysterious candidates listed as “Other” were really members of.
Louisiana actually prints “No Party” on the ballot under the names of candidates who run without a party affiliation.
One thing that the publication of this information has revealed is that majority of the so-called “Other” candidates actually wrote “Independent” in the party affiliation blank on their Notices of Candidacy. The state interprets that as meaning that they wanted to run as members of the “Independent Party.” No such party actually exists in Louisiana. To run with no party affiliation, they should have written “No Party” instead of “Independent.”
The designation “Other” does not have any real basis in Louisiana statute. It’s just the catch-all designation that the Secretary of State chose to describe all candidates affiliated with unrecognized parties. It never appeared on the ballot, but was used on the Secretary’s website.
Reporters copied the Secretary’s designation and would usually refer to a candidate in that category simply as an “other party” candidate.
Since the actual names of the parties of these candidates are now being published, there is a greater chance that reporters will use those party names, rather than the generic “other.”
There’s an “Other” box on Louisiana’s voter registration form. As I understand it, the registrant may write anything he wants to in that box if he checks it.
In the early ’80s, Henry Dart was a Libertarian candidate for the New Orleans city council, but the LP was not recognized in Louisiana at that time. Dart filed a federal lawsuit to force the state to print his party affiliation on the ballot. He lost the suit (Dart v. Brown).
There is an “Other” box followed by a blank space for writing in whatever you want on Louisiana’s voter registration forms. According to the Secretary of State’s office, there are over 300 different political parties in Louisiana, based on what people write in that space. That number is based on a very broad definition of “political party,” though. For example, each variation on the word “Independent” (including misspellings) is counted as a different political party.
There is also a blank space for party affiliation on Louisiana’s Notices of Candidacy.
You can find a copy of the mail-in version of the voter registration form here:
http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/Portals/0/elections/forms/form_0110_ver-011106.pdf
You can find a copy of the Notice of Candidacy form here:
http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/Portals/0/elections/pdf/F%20QF-42%20revised%201-1-2009%20_2_.pdf
I bet there is a “Birthday Party”…
According to the Secretary of State’s testimony before a state legislative committee earlier this year, there are about 20 Louisiana voters registered as members of the Mickey Mouse Party.
I’m sort of surprised the number is that low.
What about the “Keg Party”?
I am confident that there are at least a few registered Keggers among Louisiana voters.