On June 8, the New Hampshire legislature refused to pass SB 193, even though for a while it appeared that the bill would pass. It would have provided that the petition to qualify a new political party contain language telling potential signers that if they signed the petition, and if the petition succeeded in getting enough valid signatures, all the signers would automatically be converted to being registered members of that party.

Similar laws have been held unconstitutional in nine other states. Courts have stressed that voters have a right to support putting a party on the ballot without having to say that they are members, or that they themselves are organizing the new party, or that they should automatically be considered members. When these nine court precedents were pointed out to the bill’s sponsors, certain other legislators proposed that the bill be amended to say that the petition form should carry a checkbox, asking each signer if he or she wants to be treated as a member of that new party, but also making it clear that voters could sign the petition and yet not be forced into becoming a registered member of that party.

However, some influential members of the Election Law Committee then said that they were not interested in making the choice voluntary, and refused to amend the bill, so it died. Thanks to Representative Seth Cohn for this news. Cohn proposed making the bill voluntary instead of mandatory. He intends to introduce a superior bill in 2012, which will ease the petition burden. For 2012, the petition to create a new party requires 13,698 valid signatures. The procedure to create a new party has existed since 1996, and it is so difficult, it has only been used once, in 2000, by the Libertarian Party.