On February 17, the Maine Secretary of State filed this response in the Libertarian Party’s ballot access case. The case challenges the December 1, 2015 deadline for a group to qualify as a party. The state says that the early deadline is needed for proper election administration, even though the primary is not until June 2016.

The state says that early deadlines are constitutional if the petition or registration drive hurdle is easy, and then says that getting 5,000 voters to join the party on voter registration forms is easy. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Anderson v Celebrezze the early deadlines are unconstitutional, regardless of how easy or difficult the procedure is. In Anderson v Celebrezze, John Anderson only needed 5,000 signatures, which was only about one-tenth of 1% of the last presidential vote cast. But the March 20 deadline was still unconstitutional.