On November 5, the Maine Libertarian Party submitted a new piece of evidence in its pending ballot access case, Baines v Bellows, 1:19cv-509. The case concerns several ballot access problems for new and small political parties in Maine. One of the issues is whether the state has any justification to forcibly convert all party members to independent voter status when a party loses its qualified status, without consulting those voters.

The new evidence is a sample letter that New Mexico election officials send to all voters registered into a party that has just lost its ballot qualification. New Mexico, like most states that have registration by party, does not revoke the party registration for members of parties, when that party loses its qualified status. Instead, as the evidence shows, New Mexico sends a letter to all such voters, telling them that their party is no longer qualified, just in case they might want to change party. But the letter makes it clear that the voter need not do anything, and that the voter will remain a member of that party, qualified or not, unless the voter decides to make a change.

The point of this evidence is to show that Maine could have the same tolerant policy, without any election-administration problem, if it wanted to.