On August 9, the 8th circuit upheld the Arkansas vote test for a party to remain on the ballot. The decision is Green Party of Arkansas v Martin, 10-3106. Arkansas requires a party to poll 3% for the office at the top of the ballot in each election, in order to stay on the ballot (i.e., 3% for President in presidential years, and 3% for Governor in midterm years).
The outcome was not too surprising. No federal court has ever struck down any state’s vote test for remaining on the ballot. Generally federal courts feel that if the requirements to get a newly-qualifying party on the ballot are reasonable, states are free to dump them off the ballot after any particular election. The only winning case on this issue came in 1983 from the Alaska Supreme Court, which in Vogler v Miller struck down the old law requiring a party to poll 10% for Governor to remain on the ballot.
The Arkansas decision says “at least sixteen states” have vote tests that relate to a specific office, and footnote eleven lists them. The statement and the footnote are in error; Arizona, Alaska, Maryland and Wyoming do not belong on the list. Alaska, Arizona. and Maryland have alternate registration tests, and Wyoming permits the vote test to be satisfied by any of three different statewide offices.
The Green Party expects to start its petition for 2012 ballot access after Labor Day. It must get 10,000 valid signatures within the 90-day window that it chooses for itself, so the signatures will be due in early December 2011.
With all of the state and federal court cases each year the minor parties and independents have to go through to make their good democratic cases, I wonder how much taxpayer money has been spent thus far? I support many of these third parties and candidates just as probably the vast majority of Americans, and I think the American people need to be aware of how much they are shelling out each year to pay for administering these electoral cases?
Good point. There are some states that never have lawsuits like this, because their laws are tolerant and fair. So, those states do save a lot of resources.
Every election is NEW and has ZERO to do with any prior election results – except perhaps the number of actual voters in the election area involved.
Way too difficult for MORON lawyers and judges to understand.
Any chance for the factual errors in the opinion to be corrected ??? — since the robot party hack MORON courts copy each other again and again — i.e. keep repeating errors.
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Sorry to hear about this. I was holding out some hope the AR Greens would have some success with this. However, now the we have the LP on the ballot in AR and (hopefully) the Greens will be as well, in the likely event that we neither meet the 3% requirement, we may have a stronger case if we were to work together on a suit.
OK, i found the list. Aside from Alaska, Arizona, Maryland and Wyoming, as you mentioned, these states are: Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and West Virginia.
Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana and Massachusetts use registration to establish a party line. (Pennsylvania requires 15% of partisan registration to establish a “major party”.) What registration requirements do Arizona, Maryland, and other states have to maintain a ballot line?
In addition to Wyoming, what other states allow various statewide offices to qualify for a ballot line? Do you know of a good summary of these requirements?
# 6 How about doing a WIKI (or even a subpart of BAN) —
UNEQUAL ballot access laws in the 50 States / DC — with all of the EVIL unequal ballot access stuff — with a zillion updates for the zillion new robot party hack ballot access laws each day and year.
I know that Massachusetts allows 3% in any statewide race.
In Kentucky, its 10% of the voters or the votes for Governor (KRS 118.551) or 20% for President (KRS 118.015). This has only been met once in recent years, for Reform Party candidate Gatewood Galbraith in 1999. However, I was told by a former county executive in Louisville [who once ran for KY governor] that they purposely didn’t tell the Reform Party of their meeting the requirement because the state didn’t want to go through the hassle of finding a member of the party to be a precinct officer in each of the precincts.
If 10% was ruled too high for Alaska, why are other states allowed to be as high or even higher?
#10, the Kentucky vote test is only 2%. See 118.325(1).
The 10% vote in Kentucky determines if a party gets its own presidential primary or not. The 20% determines if a party nominates by primary for non-presidential office. But a 2% party is on the ballot and nominates by convention.