South Carolina has a very easy requirement for a ballot-qualified party to remain on the ballot. It must merely run at least one candidate for any partisan office, at least once every other election year. The Independence Party of South Carolina recently nominated a candidate for the U.S. House, First District, insuring that it will remain ballot-qualified through 2014.
The candidate is Jimmy Wood. See this story in the Post and Courier, Charleston’s daily newspaper.
The Independence Party did not have any nominees for any public office in 2008. If it had not nominated anyone this year, it would have been disqualified. The party was once the Reform Party in South Carolina. South Carolina lets parties change their names. In 2004 the party had changed its name to Independence and had run Ralph Nader for President. This will be its first candidate for U.S. House since 2000. Thanks to Dave Gillespie for the link.
Being a South Carolinian, I assumed parties in all states could easily change their names. Is this not so?
In most states, the issue of whether a ballot-qualified party may change its name has never arisen. In almost all states in which it has arisen, state elections officials have granted permission. One would think the First Amendment guarantees a political party’s right to change its name. Generally, election codes don’t say anything about this matter.
One state that has stubbornly refused to let a party change its name is Michigan. The Constitution Party is ballot-qualified in Michigan, but it is stuck with its old name, the U.S. Taxpayers Party. The national party changed its name in 1999, and every state in which the party was on the ballot with the old Taxpayers name let the party switch to its new name, except for Michigan.
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