On December 14, Americans Elect submitted its petition for full party status in Rhode Island. The state requires 17,115 valid signatures, and Americans Elect submitted 33,000. Americans Elect is only the second group to have used the Rhode Island party petition procedure. The first group to do so was the Moderate Party, which did its petition in 2009.
The party petition procedure has only existed in Rhode Island since 1994. Before 1994, Rhode Island did not have any procedure for a group to transform itself into a qualified party in advance of any particular election. Instead, all it could do was submit a candidate petition, and only if that candidate polled at least 5% for Governor did the group become a qualified party. The Rhode Island ACLU and the Rhode Island Secretary of State worked together in 1994 to persuade the legislature to improve the law. The 1994 bill also expanded the list of offices, from just Governor, to President.
Assuming the Americans Elect petition is valid, the state will hold a primary for it in 2012, for all partisan office, and anyone in Rhode Island will be permitted to run for any partisan office in the party’s primary. The Rhode Island primary (for office other than President) is September 11, 2012.
And the beat goes on. And the beat goes on.
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I believe the 5% threshold was the vote for President not Governor – at least in 1968 with George Wallace on the ballot. Had he won 5% then the party would have been on the next election – a race for governor in ’70. Wallace rec’d a little over 4% … when we tried to get John Schmitz on the ballot in ’72, at a time when it took (if I remember correctly) a whopping 500 signatures to qualify, 900+ were turned in – then challenged – and we ended up 30-40 shy of the necessary requirement.
#3, I have just looked at my 1964 and my 1974 copies of the Rhode Island Election laws. “Party” back then was strictly defined by its vote for Governor, and not any other office.