Foster’s Daily Democrat, a daily newspaper in Dover, New Hampshire, has this fairly lengthy story about the Americans Elect petition for party status in New Hampshire. The story also mentions the Libertarian Party petition for party status. Neither group is finished collecting yet, but each group has more signatures than the required 13,698.
The New Hampshire party petition has existed since 1996, and until this year, had only been used once, by the Libertarians in 2000.
The story also has interesting information about the Americans Elect ballot situation in Maine. The party petition in that state has already been held to have enough valid signatures. The story mentions that in order to remain ballot-qualified in Maine after the 2012 election, the party must have at least 10,000 registrants who actually vote in November (it doesn’t matter whom they vote for). The old 5% vote test for a party to remain ballot-qualified no longer exists, thanks to a change in the 2009 law. The story mentions that Americans Elect in Maine now has fewer than 100 registrants. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
Which party (or both?!) drove the 2009 bill to make it a 10,000 threshhold. Seems Maine is not as progressive in ballot access as I thought.
#1, the Green Party supported the 2009 bill.
And it was a fairly easy sell to persuade Maine Democratic legislators to vote for the bill. Under the old law, the Green Party was required to poll 5% for Governor every four years. The party had done this four times in a row (1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006), which is a remarkable achievement. The 2009 bill meant that the Green Party wasn’t forced to run for Governor in 2010 in order to retain its party status.
Guess it will be a bit difficult for AE to retain ballot access for 2014/16 unless they get a ground swell of election day registrants.
So basically did the Greens say that they wouldn’t run a gubernatorial candidate to entice the Dems to allow the 10,000 threshhold law?
#2/3: No, the Greens ran a candidate for Governor (Lynne Williams) but she was unable to qualify because of the harsh ballot access laws for statewide and federal offices in Maine. In Maine, you need 2,000 valid signatures of party members to qualify for statewide ballot as a party candidate. In context, the Maine Green Independent Party now has about 31,000 enrolled voters, which means 1 out of every 15.5 Greens in the state would have to sign. There were no backroom deals and the Green Party is still fighting the harsh requirements.
#4, when will the Green Party sue over those problems?
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