On June 7, the Maine Joint Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee passed LD 1571, after amending it so that it makes only modest improvements to the party qualification and retention process. The original version of the bill had made bigger improvements.
The bill makes it clear that the Libertarian Party is to be considered a qualified party for the 2018 election. But in 2018, both the Libertarian Party and the Green Party must have at least 10,000 registered members who actually go to the polls and vote, in order to remain on for 2020. This is the same requirement as in existing law, except that in the existing law a party must meet that requirement in its first year on the ballot, but the bill says in the case of a newly-qualifying party, that party need not meet that test until its second election year on the ballot.
The original version of the bill had said that any party can remain on the ballot if it has 5,000 registered members, without specifying that they must be individuals who actually cast a ballot. But that provision was deleted from the bill.
The amended bill makes a small improvement in the deadline for qualifying as a new party. Existing law says that deadline is December 1 of the year before the election. The bill changes that to January 2 of the election year.
This bill exists because in 2016, a U.S. District Court enjoined the December (of the odd year before the election) deadline for qualifying as a new party. The court said that deadline was probably unconstitutional, but did not actually make a decision about declaratory relief. Assuming the bill passes, the new deadline, January of the election year, will still probably be held unconstitutional if a new lawsuit is ever filed, but because the Libertarian Party is now on the ballot, of course the Libertarian Party no longer has any complaint. The original version of the bill moved the deadline to June and said newly-qualifying parties could nominate by convention, but that part has been deleted from the bill.
This is another reason why Maine should switch to a candidate-based system like Top 2. Maine has about 10,000 registered Libertarians, but it is hard for a candidate to even qualify for the primary ballot. House candidates only need 25 signatures, but they have to come from party members. Divide 10,000 by 151 districts, and average registration per district is around 60. So in a typical district, a candidate would need to hunt down those 60, and get 40% to sign his petition.
Because the Libertarians never have primaries, there is no reason to register as a Libertarian since it makes one ineligible to vote in a primary. The Greens have quite a bit more registrants, but they only managed two primary legislative candidates (out of 151 House districts and 35 senate districts). One withdrew before the general election. The other received over 50 times as many votes in the general election as they did in the primary.
A candidate-based system does not prevent groups of citizens from organizing either on a partisan or ad hoc basis to recruit candidates and provide support for candidates.
Top-2 is the worst kind of “electoral reform” in history, just look at how awful California voting is for their congressional and senate races.
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