Earlier this year, the Delaware legislature doubled the threshold for a party to be ballot-qualified, and made that change effective immediately. Delaware is the only state in which a party’s qualified status is completely dependent on how many registered voters it has. On May 27, Representative Earl Jacques introduced HB 425, to provide that the new, more difficult requirement should not be implemented until 2011.

The old requirement was approximately 305 registered voters; the new one is 610 registered voters. The precise requirements can’t be known yet because they depend on how many voters are registered in August 2010.

The Delaware Election Commission asked for this bill, so as not to eliminate parties this year that don’t meet the new threshold and which have nominated candidates. It is very difficult for parties to gain new registrations in Delaware during an election year. Delaware has severe restrictions on the ability of voters to change parties during election years. Unless the bill passes, it is virtually certain that the Constitution Party nominees will be off the ballot, and there is some doubt as to whether the Green Party nominees would be off. The new law also disqualified the Socialist Workers Party and the Blue Enigma Party from this year’s ballot, but they didn’t have any nominees anyway. Thanks to Wolfgang von Baumgart for this news.