On January 23, a hearing was held in U.S. District Court in Maryland, in Johnston v Lamone, the lawsuit over the Maryland definition of “political party”. At the hearing, the state agreed to leave the Libertarian Party as a choice on the voter registration forms until the lawsuit gets a ruling, which will be quite soon. There will be oral argument on Thursday, January 31, at 2:30 p.m. The issue is whether it the state’s definition of a qualified party is constitutional, as applied to a party like the Libertarian Party, which has over 10,000 registered voters yet which is not a qualified party.
The party argues that it is not rational to force it to obtain 10,000 signatures on a petition to restore its party status, when it has 22,464 registered members. It seems that if the party has that many registered voters, there are more than 10,000 voters in the state who want it on the ballot, so the petition would be meaningless. The case is before U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake, a Clinton appointee. There really are no cases on point.
The Green Party has 9,285 registered members. It is not on the ballot either, but if the Libertarians prevail in court, and the Green Party increases its registration to at least 10,000, that would help the Green Party also.
Regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit, there is no reason for the Maryland Secretary of State to convert all of a party’s registered voters to independent/non-partisan if a party loses ballot status. I can’t think of any other state that does this.
Maryland no longer does that, which is good. Even if the party goes off the ballot and stays off for a while, it keeps its registered members, but the number would not increase if the party isn’t listed as a choice on the voter registration form. Although there is a write-in line for unlisted parties. But it’s not clear any new registrants would be tallied.
INDIVIDUAL persons get nominated/elected — NOT *parties – old/new, big/small.
Too many lawyer and judge MORONS in ballot access cases to count.
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EQUAL ballot access tests for such INDIVIDUAL persons.
Richard, I called the Maryland Elections Division in November, and they said that they were going to convert the voter registrations of the Libertarian and Green parties to being non-partisan registrations if they did not turn in 10,000 petition signatures by January. Has the law or policy changed in Maryland, or are they just holding off on doing this because of the pending lawsuit?
If it were not for the states’ monopoly of printing ballots, there would be no need for a law defining a “political party” as a special entity for the state to regulate.
Yes, Andy, the policy has changed since November 2018.
There is some legal precedent for state’s being required to allow people to continue to register as belonging to a previously recognized political party for at least some length of time. The ruling in Atherton v. Ward mandated that Oklahoma do this.