The Tennessee Senate State and Local Government Committee will hear SB 935 on Tuesday, March 15, at 10:30 a.m., in room 12. SB 935 makes some very small improvements in the law on how groups qualify as political parties in Tennessee. The bill improves the filing deadline for new party petitions slightly. Existing law seems to require the petition to be filed in March (although the law is vague). The bill changes the deadline to the first Thursday in April. An identical bill in the House, HB 794, hasn’t been given a hearing date yet.

Besides improving the deadline slightly, the bill also liberalizes the law by providing that the petition to qualify a new party no longer must say that the signers are members. And the bill would provide that newly-qualifying parties would not need to set up primary election boards.

However, parties would still need a petition signed by 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote. They would still nominate by primary. Candidates in the new party’s primary would need to submit their petitions to run in the primary of that new party on the first Thursday in April, before they knew if their own party’s petition would be sufficient. The bill says that candidates who file to run in a new party’s primary would be put on the November ballot as independents if it turns out that their own party’s petition doesn’t contain enough valid signatures.

This bill only exists because last year a U.S. District Court struck down the Tennessee procedure for a party to get on the ballot. SB 935, if signed into law, would probably still be unconstitutional. The Tennessee primary (for office other than president) is in early August, so SB 935 would still require a very difficult petition, to be submitted four months before the primary. One of the main reasons the old law was declared unconstitutional was that the 6th circuit had invalidated the Ohio procedure for new parties, and Tennessee is bound by the Ohio decision, because both states are in the 6th circuit. The Ohio petition for a new party, which was held unconstitutional, was four months before the primary, and required a petition of 1% of the last vote cast. If the 6th circuit thought a 1% petition, due four months before a primary, was unconstitutional, it seems likely that SB 935 would be unconstitutional.

Another bill in Tennessee, SB 617, which is far better, has not been given a hearing date. This is probably because it doesn’t have a companion bill in the House.