Connecticut puts parties on the ballot in the order of their vote in the last gubernatorial election. In 2018, the Connecticut Independent Party won the third line by outpolling the Working Families Party in the gubernatorial race. But in 2022, the Working Families Party regained the third line by outpolling the Independent Party.
The Independent Party in past gubernatorial elections had always nominated the Republican nominee, until 2022, when it ran its own nominee, who polled .98%. It was the first time in the Independent Party’s history that it had run for a statewide state office in Connecticut and failed to get 1%. In Connecticut, where qualified status is office-by-office, the vote test is 1%, so the Independent Party is no longer qualified for governor, although it still is for all the other statewide state offices.
How does ballot access retention work for the 2 major parties in races when they don’t run a candidate? Presume it does not apply to them because of some other threshold ij a race they met?
Aren’t most families working families?
Are they not interested in votes from single working people?
It’s just a shell for the Democrats
Good question, Ryan. Another law says a party that got 20% for Governor in the last election is qualified for all offices.
The Working Families Party was a New York fusionist party vehicle founded by union locals in the statw to replace the Liberal Party of New York when it fell off the New York ballot. As has happened with the left union-based parties in the western world (other examples: NDP in Canada, Labour in the UK), it since got taken over by progressives not much concerned with jobs or families and has ostracized the union support that previously formed the party’s backbone financially.
IIRC, if a party has 20% of registered voters it can get ballot access for all offices that way, as well as through the 20% Gubernatorial vote test.