Minnesota law on the order of candidates on the general election ballot is unique. It says that nominees of ballot-qualified parties must be listed first, in inverse order of how many votes each of them received at the last election for all offices. Minnesota has four ballot-qualified parties in 2020. Applying the law, and using 2018 election returns, the existing law means that the order of candidates on the November 2020 will put the Legal Marijuana Now nominees at the top, followed by the nominees of the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Parties, followed by Republicans, followed by Democrats. Below them will be the nominees of the unqualified parties, such as Libertarians, Greens, etc.

Last year the Minnesota Democratic Party filed a lawsuit against the law. The party argues in favor of a random method to determine which of the qualified party nominees appears on the ballot for each office, but the Democratic Party does not argue that the nominees of the unqualified parties should be permitted to have any chance for the top line.

On February 3, the state filed this brief, which pokes fun at the Democratic Party for arguing for a chance for the top line for itself, but not for the unqualified parties. The state also says that the Democratic Party’s argument, predicting that the Legal Marijuana Now and Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Parties will have virtually no candidates, is completely unsound because it is too early to predict how many nominees those two parties will have. Candidates need not file for the primary until June 2, which is far in the future. The primary itself is August 11. The Democratic Party wants the court to assume the two cannabis-related parties will have virtually no nominees, because it wants the court to assume that practically every race will list the Republican nominee first.