Three New Hampshire state representatives have introduced HB 116, which would make it much more difficult for candidates to get on primary ballots for Governor, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House. The bill would increase the filing fee for Governor and Senator from $100 to $10,000; and for U.S. House from $50 to $5,000.
The new filing fees would also apply to independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties.
The petitions in lieu of filing fee would also be vastly increased. For Governor and Senator, from 200 signatures to 25,000; for U.S. House, from 100 to 12,500.
The obvious objection to the bill is that New Hampshire primary ballots are not crowded for those offices. In 2022, there was one name on the Democratic primary ballot for Governor; three on the Democratic primary ballot for Senator; six on the Republican primary ballot for Governor; and ten on the Republican primary ballot for U.S. Senator.
The bill does not change filing fees for the presidential primary, and those ballots are far more crowded. In 2020 the Republican primary ballot had 17 names, and the Democratic primary had 25 names. The filing fee for president is $1,000.
The sponsors are: (1) Joe Sweeney (R-Salem) who has served in the House starting in 2012; (2) Joe Alexander (R-Goffstown) who has served starting in 2018; (3) Ross Berry (R-Manchester) who has served since 2020.
It may be that the motivation for this bill is dissatisfaction with the 2022 Republican primary for U.S. Senate. The race was close between Donald Bolduc and Chuck Morse, and these three legislators might feel that they wish Morse had won, and that if fewer candidates had been on the ballot, Morse would have won. Thanks to several people for news about this bill.
pets – pct of voters in election are at last main election
Fees – min pets x $ amount
Of overcrowding is really the motivation, there’s an easy fix. No minimum number of petition signatures. The N applicants with highest number of signatures get on the ballot.
This would be fine if N was some reasonable number like 5. But one suspects the authorities are dissatified with any N > 1.
Duh, if donald j trump says we need only him running the country, then thats ok dokie.
Unironically, that’s exactly what we need.
Parties should be able to determine which candidates get on their own primary, by either petition, fees, caucuses, party committees and/or convention, and should be able to determine the method of voting within their own primaries.
Walter is correct. Bob is also correct on other threads where he suggests open in person voting as is done now in caucuses, town meetings, party conventions etc as the real solutions to the ballot access and vote fraud problems.
It’s not so much “crowded” in the sense of overwhelming voters. It’s crowded in the sense of splitting votes and changing the outcome of the race!
If you value ballot access but are concerned about vote splitting and spoilers… do I even need to tell anyone here what some possible solutions might be?
Also, sitting legislators have an (conflict of???) interest in reducing competition.
Vote splitting can be eliminated by having only one vote per election, for the party. Parties can then either wait to see if they won to pick officeholders through any means they choose or if they prefer, pick their candidates in the same manner before the election.
As for spoilers, I don’t see that as so much of a problem. Any party which is found by a court of law to have misrepresented it’s intent in persuading voters to stand in their corner or section on election night should be subject to having it’s executive committee and precinct committeemen publicly whipped and left in the stockade for 24 hours, then fined and ordered to perform some sort of humiliating community service, with repeat offenders impaled in the town square and the very same day they are found guilty and left to rot there. That ought to be enough to dissuade joke parties and deliberate attempts to spoil or game the vote from attempting to frivolously or fraudulently persuading the men who are gathered to vote to stand in their corner. Even a very simple requirement that any party would need at least one qualified committeeman in every precinct where it wishes to have a corner for men to stand in on election day should be enough to essentially eliminate spoilers.