On June 19, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed HB 2305, the omnibus election law bill. Among other things, it makes it exceedingly difficult for a member of a small ballot-qualified party member to get on his or her own party’s primary ballot.
Jan Brewer has never been a friend of ballot access. In 2005, when she was Secretary of State, she persuaded the legislature to pass her bill to provide that if a candidate tried to petition onto a ballot, and failed, then the same candidate was barred from being a write-in candidate.
The ballot access restriction requires approximately 5,500 signatures of party members to get on a statewide primary ballot. This is not difficult for major party members, because the major parties have hundreds of thousands of members, but it is very difficult to get 5,500 valid signatures from a party like the Libertarian, Green, or Americans Elect Party, which have much smaller registration. If the small parties invite independent voters into their primary, then independent voters can also sign primary petitions.
In 1985, a U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania struck down a requirement that a member of the Consumer Party (which had 7,000 registrants) needed 2,000 signatures of party members to get on the Consumer Party primary ballot. Consumer Party v Davis, 606 F.Supp. 1008 (eastern district). UPDATE: see this story about the bill in Tucson’s daily newpaper, the Arizona Daily Star.
Any chance of getting this thrown out in court? They could do a referendum against it, but I don’t think that the resources are available to get such a referendum on the ballot.
What ballot access lawyer is NOT a MORON ???
Each election is NEW.
EQUAL ballot access requirements for ALL candidates for the same office in the same area.
Nonstop MORON SCOTUS opinions since 1968 — Williams v. Rhodes.
What was the vote breakdown in the state legislature for this bill?
This was just a tiny part of the bill.
HB 2305 was a bill that would change provisions for initiatives a bit, requiring signature seats to be organized by county, or something. It sat in conference for two months, then was stuffed with a bunch of other election bill that had not passed, and then the conference committee report was on the other provisions.
Most votes were cast based on other provisions.
The law also eliminates the possibility used by candidates of minor parties to win primaries with just a plurality of the votes cast.
The relevant section was Arizona Revised Statutes 16-645(D).
OLD:
Except as provided in subsection C of this section, a letter declaring nomination shall not be issued to a write in candidate of a party that has not qualified for continued representation on the official ballot pursuant to section 16 804 unless he receives a plurality of the votes of the party for the office for which he is a candidate.
NEW:
D. Except as provided in subsection C of this section, a letter declaring nomination shall not be issued to a write‑in candidate of a party that has not qualified for continued representation on the official ballot pursuant to section 16‑804 unless he the candidate receives a plurality of the votes of the party for the office for which he the person is a candidate and the candidate receives at least the number of votes that is equal to the number of signatures that are required pursuant to section 16-322 for nominating petitions for that same office.
Luckily New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has agreed to serve as our party’s Honorary Interim National Chairman (H.N.I.C.) and to financially help Arizona Americans Elect Party candidates get on the ballot.
http://azamericanselect.blogspot.com/2013/06/michael-bloomberg-named-honorary.html
And we all know Bloomberg proved in 2009 that he can get on the ballot no matter what the statutory law says!
Trey Young, thank you very much for telling me about that other restriction in the bill. I hadn’t known that. That same law was in effect in 1980, and the Socialist Workers Party won a federal court case against the minimum number of write-in votes. The case was Socialist Workers Party of Arizona v Mofford, civ 80-293 PHX CLH.
“Except as provided in subsection C of this section, a letter declaring nomination shall not be issued to a write‑in candidate of a party that has not qualified for continued representation on the official ballot pursuant to section 16‑804 unless he the candidate receives a plurality of the votes of the party for the office for which he the person is a candidate and the candidate receives at least the number of votes that is equal to the number of signatures that are required pursuant to section 16-322 for nominating petitions for that same office.”
Whoah! Am I to take this to mean that if an LP candidate in Arizona has to get 5,500 valid petition signatures to appear on the primary ballot, that if they cross this hurdle, they then have to receive at least 5,500 votes in the primary in order to make it to the general election ballot?
If so, this could be difficult, because voter turn out in lower for the primaries, and most people do not even know that the Libertarian Party has a primary, including a lot of the people who vote Libertarian in the general elections.
This bill is obviously to make it so Libertarians, Greens, and anyone else other than Democrat or Republican have a very difficult time making it to the general election ballots in Arizona.
This is like Top Two Primaries’ revenge.
Well crud. 🙁
I don’t see that change in HB 2305.
There is an introduced bill, HB 2568 which had the new petition requirements AND that change to 16-645.
16-645 makes a distinction in Paragraph D and E between parties entitled to continued representation and parties not. Presumably the SWP was not entitled to continued representation, and under current (2012) law a write-in candidate would only need a plurality.
Is the Green Party entitled to continued representation at this point?
IIUC, the Libertarian Party is entitled to continued representation, and the threshold for a write-in candidate is that specified in 16-322, and 16-322 is the section modified by HB 2305. So a Libertarian write-in candidate would have to receive more votes to qualify as a nominee under HB 2305