This year, legislatures in Montana, Minnesota and Texas are threatening to pass bills making it far more difficult for a ballot-qualified party to remain on the ballot, and making the new requirement go into effect before the 2024 election. This is shocking behavior. It has long been the custom that when a state makes it more difficult for a ballot-qualified party to remain on the ballot, the change does not take effect until after the next election, to give any affected party a chance to try to meet the new requirement.

The Minnesota and Texas bills raise the vote test to 10%, and the Montana bill raises it to 5% of the number of registered voters. The Minnesota bill would eliminate the Legal Marijuana Now Party; the Montana bill would eliminate the Libertarian and Green Parties; the Texas bill would eliminate the Green Party immediately although the Libertarian Party would remain on the ballot for a few more elections because the Libertarian Party polled over 10% for a statewide race in 2018.

Here is a link to an unreported order of a U.S. District Court in the southern district of Ohio, from 2014. It grants injunctive relief to the Ohio Libertarian Party, to keep it on the ballot in 2014. The legislature in late 2013 had passed a bill removing the Libertarian, Green, Socialist and Constitution Parties from the 2014 ballot unless they did a new, severe petition, but the judge said that due process required making that change effective after the 2014 election, not before.

BAN is posting this court order so it will be a resource for activists trying to fight the Minnesota, Montana and Texas bills.

Until 2023, the last states that had removed a party from the ballot effective before the next election had been Alabama in 1982 and Arkansas in 1971. But the U.S. Justice Department countermanded the Alabama effective date, and a U.S. District Court in Arkansas struck down the 1971 law, several years afterwards. A 3-judge U.S. District Court in Michigan had prevented Michigan from making a hostile change immediately in 1976, and that decision is not only reported, it was summarily affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hudler v Austin, 49 F.Supp.1002 (e.d.Mich 1976), 430 U.S. 924 (1977).