Last month, the Country Party submitted 6,387 signatures on its Wyoming ballot access petition. The requirement is 3,740 signatures. Even though the Country Party submitted 70% more signatures than the requirement, the state now says that the petition only contains 3,190 valid signatures. This means that the state believes that only 50% of the signatures submitted are valid.
The party is free to get more signatures. The deadline is June 1, 2012. The reason the validity rate is so low is that Wyoming election officials maintain that people who did not vote in 2010 are not eligible to sign petitions. They are legally classed as “inactive” voters, even if they voted in 2008. The federal Motor Voter law of 1993 makes it illegal for states to classify voters as “inactive” unless they skip two even-year general elections in a row. But, that federal law deosn’t apply to states that have election-day registration, and Wyoming has election-day registration.
Wyoming does not permit people to register to vote between elections unless they appear physically at the office of a county or state election official. Therefore, a substantial share of Wyoming adult citizens are not registered to vote in the period between elections. This, of course, makes it very difficult for petitions to have a normal validity rate. In some states, if an “inactive voter” signs a petition, and the signature and address matches the voter registration record, then that voter is automatically moved onto the “active voter” list. The whole purpose of the “inactive voter” concept is that the government is afraid that person no longer is registered at the current address. But an otherwise valid signature on a petition is evidence that that voter does still live at the same address, and logically that person should not only be allowed to sign the petition, but to be reclassified as an active voter. The restrictive Wyoming policy on signature validity is not logical.
In 1970 the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed a decision of a lower 3-judge court in New York that said it is unconstitutional for a state to say that people can’t sign petitions if they hadn’t voted in the last election, even if they had registered to vote since the last election. That case was Socialist Workers Party v Rockefeller, 400 US 806. The logic of that decision implies that the Wyoming policy might be unconstitutional, especially in the context of how difficult it is for voters to re-register between elections.
Abolish the Senate.
Abolish Wyoming – THE lowest population State — merge it with an adjacent State.
Geez Demo Rep… chill out!
#2 – Ditto. Chill out Demo. Country Party only needs 550 more sigs and they have over five months to get them. I’d say Wyoming is pretty cool with ballot access laws. No need to complain.
About 10-15 States are VERY SMALL — and all should be merged with another State.
Try and find the smaller States on a photo from outer space.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
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The EVIL Senate is due to math — in 1774 when the FIRST Continental Congress met there was NO good estimates of the populations of the various colonies.
Result – one State = one vote in the 1CC — and also later in the 2CC in May 1775 with the start of the American Revolutionary WAR on 19 Apr 1775 in Mass.
Thus the Senate is a math accident/disaster.
Count the dead in 1861-1865 due to the Senate — Free/slave States added in 1789-1861.
The 1865-1866 Congress math morons kept the Senate regardless of its EVIL math.
The 666 ROT goes on and on in the ANTI-Democracy Senate.
“I’d say Wyoming is pretty cool with ballot access laws. No need to complain.”
I’d say that Wyoming is pretty uncool with ballot access laws. They disqualify petition signatures that would be considered as valid signatures in every other state of which I’m aware (and I’m aware of a lot of them). There aren’t a whole lot of public places where people can gather petition signatures in Wyoming without getting kicked out. The public library in Cheyenne has an anti-free speech policy which violates multiple court rulings.
Ballot access for parties and candidates in Wyoming is not easy. Ballot access in Wyoming for ballot initiatives and referenda is even worse. It is so difficult to qualify a citizen’s initiative for the ballot in Wyoming that one of them has not qualified for the ballot since the early or mid ’90s.
Wyoming needs some ballot access and voter registration reform.
Wyoming was one of the post-Civil War State regimes created by the Elephants in an attempt to have PERMANENT Elephant control of the gerrymander Senate.
See the latest population estimates –
Gee — ONE guess which State is at the bottom of the list.
The moron Congress paid very limited attention to the continental divide in creating gerrymander States in the West.
Inactive voters can sign petitions to register political parties since 1985, as result of a case filed by the now-defunct Puerto Rican Renewal Party against the State Elections Commission. The Elections Commission wanted to limit the right to sign a petition to “active” voters.
The trial court determined that while the state could require inactive voters to reactivate their electoral record to vote, it couldn’t require them to reactivate in order to sign a petition.
There are still many problems with registering political parties in Puerto Rico, but that one isn’t one of them.
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blanket lawsuits would probably solve this problem,too bad we dont have any politically (non-self serving)minded laywers in this state.I cant say I didnt expect this,but I must also state that the secretary of state is one of the single most egregious offenders of state citizens rights.Time for real term limits.
I do not care if Wyoming has a population of 100 people, anybody trying to merge Wyoming with another state will run into some serious problems! Wyoming needs alot of reform but I would say it needs less then most other states! I was born here and choose to live here because of the wide open spaces and low count in population. To those who choose to live in the big city, you can have it!
If we can get our legislature to stand up to these un-constitutional federal agencies and get them out of here we will be far better off!
Nobody can show where these agencies have authority to add mandates on the states!
Justin @ #10… pay no attention to the man behind the curtain it’s not the Great and Powerful Oz… it’s only Demo Rep! As I recall nobody listened to Oz, either.