On October 18, leaders of the ballot-qualified Independence Party of South Carolina announced that the party is merging with the Forward Party (which is not on the ballot) and the South Carolina Independence Party will change its name to the Forward Party.

This makes the third state in which the Forward Party is ballot-qualified. The other two are Florida and Utah.

The South Carolina Independence Party was originally put on the ballot in 1996 and was named the Reform Party. It changed its name to Independence in 2004.

In 2004 it nominated Ralph Nader for president, and in 2016 it nominated Evan McMullin for president. Those are the only two elections since it ceased being the Reform Party in which it had presidential nominees.

South Carolina makes it very easy for qualified parties to remain qualified. They just need to run at least one nominee for some federal or state office every four years. The state’s policy of letting parties change their names has been helpful to new parties in the past. When the Natural Law Party decided to cease to exist, the South Carolina Natural Law Party kindly changed its name to the Green Party, so that the Green Party became qualified in South Carolina.