No Labels Party Becomes Qualified in Florida

On November 4, the Secretary of State of Florida granted recognition to the No Labels Party. Therefore, in 2024, it is free to run nominees for any partisan office, except for the only office for which the party is interested, President.

Even though No Labels Party is qualified, it isn’t recognized by the Federal Elections Commission, so under a law passed in 2011, it can’t be on for President unless it submits a petition of 145,040 signatures. The petition need not carry the name of the presidential candidate. It is believed that No Labels is circulating this petition.

The 2011 law is probably unconstitutional. The FEC does not grant national committee recognition based on voter support for the party. It grants it to any party that has already run nominees for president and congress in several states. The FEC will never grant national committee recognition to a new party. Therefore, the law discriminates against new parties, relative to old ones. In 2011 the Florida Secretary of State issued a ruling saying he would not apply the law, because he had no official knowledge of which parties are recoognized by the FEC. But in September 2016, another Florida Secretary of State reversed that ruling and did enforce the law, which kept Evan McMullin off the ballot as the Independent Party nominee. McMullin did not fight that reversal in court. In 2020 the Secretary of State did not enforce the law and put the presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism & Liberation on the ballot, even though it wasn’t recognized by the FEC and did not petition.


Comments

No Labels Party Becomes Qualified in Florida — 10 Comments

  1. The one-year law says the party can’t run anyone who hasn’t been a registered member for a year before the filing deadline. The party will have no trouble with that law, since the election is two years away.

  2. But wouldn’t that seem to imply that they’d need to register choose their nominees quite early? If they wanted to endorse a bipartisan ticket, for instance, it would appear that they’d need both halves of that ticket as registered members a year before the election, which means that they would need to decide on such a ticket far before any other party does, and persuade those members to abandon their old registration at a time when that might make the following months difficult for them politically. It would appear that they would want to see how the major party primaries go anyhow, because their electoral strategy might be very different depending on whether Trump wins or loses the GOP nomination. Requiring the NLP to effectively choose their nominee months before the primaries even begin seems a bit harsh, unless I’m misunderstanding something here.

  3. Having a party registration requirement for minor party candidates for President makes no sense. Party registration is a state function. There is no such thing as national party registration. What if a Florida minor party wants to nominate a Presidential candidate from another state? That person could not register as a member of the Florida minor party. What if it wants to run a candidate who resides in a state that does not register voters by party? It makes no sense.

  4. The Florida law doesn’t cover presidential and vice-presidential candidates. It applies to candidates for presidential elector. No state tries to control the party registration of candidates for president or vice-president. That would make no sense, because 19 states don’t have registration by party. George W. Bush was not a registered Republican when he ran for president, because there is no party registration in Texas and never has been.

  5. I would like to register for the no-label party in Florida and run in the Hillsborough County sector where Kathy Caistor in the representative.

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