On June 17, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed AB 81, one of the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bills. Among other things, it moves the petition deadline for new parties from May to April. In 1986 a U.S. District Court in Nevada declared that state’s former April petition deadline for new party petitions to be unconstitutional.
The bill also deletes the easy method for new parties to get on the ballot. The old Nevada law gave unqualified parties a choice: they could either submit a petition of 1% of the last vote (7,013 signatures), to become ballot-qualified; or they could submit candidate petitions, which only required 250 signatures for statewide office and 100 for U.S. House and other district and county office. Party labels were permitted for both methods. However, the latter procedure is now repealed. The latter procedure never did apply to presidential candidates, but it did apply to all other partisan office.
ANY States having party hack primaries and conventions in which ALL parties have EQUAL ballot access requirements ???
i.e. start a new party and get on the primary ballots the same way as the Donkeys/Elephants.
i.e. have the same primary test for all parties to get on the general election ballots
GRRR vote out Sandoval!!
Where was the opposition to this bill?
This bill was a thousand times worse then it was until Janine Hansen and the IAP put pressure on the legislature to water the bill down and take out the harmful anti-TP language, which included increasing candidate filing fees and making it very difficult for third parties to run candidates, period.
However the only people this bill really hurts are bastards like Scott Ashjian- who used the loopholes in the old law to qualify a phony ‘third party’ onto the ballot as a political ploy to help Reid; both the IAP and the NVLP opposed Ashjian.
Now, if a new party wants to get on the ballot, they just need to work a little harder to get those 7,000+ signatures to get on, and any serious group with dedication on their side can do it. Even the ‘Americans Elect’ group got on the Nevada ballot easily.
BTW, LV, are you a Nevadan?
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#4, the new Nevada ballot access law, 1% of the last vote cast, is now more difficult than the existing Arizona law as applied to midterm election years. The Constitution Party has never been able to get on the ballot in Arizona. When you express the opinion that Nevada’s new, tougher law is good policy, you are implicitly saying that it is a good thing that the Constitution Party can’t get on the Arizona ballot. Is that really what you mean to say? This is a matter of principle. The Constitution Party can’t say that it likes tough ballot access in Nevada (where it is safely on the ballot) and that it opposes severe ballot access laws in other states.
It is to the credit of the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, that neither party has ever come out in support of restrictive ballot access laws, in any state, for anyone. The chief victim of the new Nevada law is the Green Party.
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Since when did I say that Nevada’s election laws ought to be the same in other states? I’m only focused on my state here, Richard.
Having seen the rise of the TPN and also the so-called ‘Tequila Party’ in Nevada; both groups were founded not as serious political entities, but to only benefit the other major party and perhaps hurt the ballot-qualified third parties here in elections. IMO, for a third party to be ballot qualified here- it should be earned, and not freely given to incompetent, petty groups that are stooges to the two-party system and only serve to divide the third party vote.
If we are to defeat the two-party system, especially in Nevada, it WILL NOT be through constantly dividing the third party vote by creating new parties or even splitting others.
#8, Vermont has very easy ballot access, but that doesn’t stop the Progressive Party of Vermont from electing six legislators almost every election year, and it didn’t stop the voters from electing an independent to the US House in all elections 1990-2004, and an independent to the US Senate in 2006.
Also, Minnesota has easy ballot access, and when Jesse Ventura was elected Governor, there were 8 candidates on the ballot for Governor, but that didn’t stop him. It is a myth that minor parties do better when the ballot access laws are tough and the number of such parties is few.
Yet has the Progressive Party been gaining in elected office-holders since their founding? Have independents made any more gains in Vermont as well? Vermont has a unique history of electing independents to office, and even toying with the idea of session from the US as well. Oh, and Vermont has also been changing their election laws, starting with IRV in Burlington.
Same thing with the Minnesota and the Independence Party- have they made any more gains, or have they become as powerful as the old Farmer-Labor Party was in the early 20th Century? And btw, Ventura was a celebrity and well-known, plus he had the money to campaign.
And like Vermont, Minnesota also has a long history of electing third-party candidates to office, the former FLP as a good example- so third parties do have more public sympathy there then here in Nevada.
Maine’s ballot access rules aren’t as friendly to third parties, yet they have elected independents to state offices before and elected members of the GIP to their state legislature.
Each state culture & society is different and unique, and what may be good for Vermont and Minnesota wouldn’t necessarily be good for Nevada, especially with the political climate we currently have here.
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