On December 25, Arizona newspapers ran stories on the Arizona Green Party’s ballot access lawsuit. For example, see this story.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court on November 18, 2009, and is called Arizona Green Party v Bennett. It challenges the prohibition on out-of-state circulators. It also challenges the February 2010 deadline for new party petitions. The newspaper story says there is no hearing date, but there is a hearing date. The hearing will be January 11, 2010.

The newspaper story also says the party is challenging a law that makes it illegal for out-of-staters to register voters in Arizona. That is not correct. The party has been circulating a petition to get itself back on the ballot, and it is challenging the ban on petition circulators, not people who want to register voters.

The Arizona law for party status is complex. The Green Party can either be on in 2010 if it has registration of two-thirds of 1% as of November 1, 2009, or if it submits a petition signed by 1.33% of the 2006 gubernatorial vote. The party is using the petition method, not the registration method. It has 16,000 signatures, and it estimates that without volunteer help from Greens in neighboring states, it won’t have 20,449 valid signatures by February 25, 2010. California Greens would like to help with the petition drive, but it is illegal for them to do so. The state already lost on this issue in 2008, but all the legislature did in response was to legalize out-of-state circulators for independent presidential petitions. It left the out-of-state ban in place for all other types of petitions.