On April 13, the Maryland legislature adjourned for the year. Neither ballot access bill passed. SB 240, which provided that petition signatures are valid even if the voter didn’t sign exactly as he or she signed the voter registration form, had passed the Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee on April 12. But it didn’t advance any further. SB 710, to lower the number of signatures for a new party from 10,000 to 5,000, didn’t make any headway at all.
The legislature did pass HB 496/SB 400, and on April 13, the Governor signed it into law. It says that for redistricting purposes, prisoners should be counted as residents of their homes before they were incarcerated, instead of as residents of the prison. Maryland is the first state in the nation to pass such a law. This type of law reduces the artificial advantage given to areas that have prisons, when the legislature draws U.S. House and state legislative districts.
Is their an ideal number of petition signatures that should be required to formally register a political party in a state? A number that generally avoids a ballot being too overcrowded, but is not too complicated or otherwise difficult?