On April 12, Ohio Senator Mark Wagoner introduced SB 148, with the backing of the Secretary of State. It is an omnibus election law bill, and includes a provision for a new procedure for minor parties to get on the ballot. The old procedure was held unconstitutional in 2006.
The bill provides that a petition to qualify a new or previously unqualified party needs signatures equal in number to one-half of 1% of the last vote cast. If this bill had been in effect in 2010, it would have required 28,542 valid signatures. If it were in effect in 2012, it would require 19,263 valid signatures. The petition would be due 100 days before the primary. If it were in effect in 2012, the petition deadline would be November 26, 2011 (the next Ohio statewide primary is March 6, 2012).
The bill also has a provision for a party that does not wish to run anyone for any partisan office except President. That petition would also require one-half of 1% of the last vote cast, but it would not be due until 80 days before the general election, which would be August 18, 2010.
It is not clear if the Secretary of State believes that this bill, if signed into law, could be implemented for 2012. If it were signed into law, for example, in July 2011, it would give parties only four months to comply with the law. Some courts have ruled in the past that when a new petition hurdle is implemented during the middle of the petitioning season, due process requires that the number of signatures be reduced proportionately to the time not available.
It is likely that the new petition deadline (for parties that wish to have candidates for all office, not just president) would still be unconstitutional. Petition deadlines for new parties that are earlier than the primary, and earlier than May, have always been declared unconstitutional, regardless of how few signatures are required. Even states that had very low signature requirements could not win in court against petition deadlines in April or earlier. Examples are Alaska, Kentucky, Maine, and New Jersey, all of which required 5,000 or fewer signatures for new parties, or new party nominees, but still had their early deadlines thrown out.
How many *omnibus* election law bills/laws have their been since Bush v. Gore in 2000 ???
OR — how many ways can the EVIL party hack gerrymander robots rig elections ???
How about a book ??? — Election Law for DUMMIES — i.e. for party hack gerrymander robots in State legislatures.
P.R. and App.V. — to END the EVIL.
Is there anything in the bill that would change or challenge the status of minor parties that already have ballot access in Ohio?
The bill takes no cognizance of the existing facts. It does not amend the 5% vote test (for the office at the top of the ticket, Governor and then President alternatively) for a party to remain on.
In 1970, the Socialist Labor Party was put on the ballot by court order. The 1971 session of the legislature lowered the party petition from 7% to 1%, and also eased the vote test from 7% to 5%. The SLP didn’t get even 1% for Governor in 1970, but the Secretary of State left the SLP on the ballot for 1972 as well. Maybe the existing Secretary of State would do the same thing for 2012 in relation to the Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and Socialist Parties, all of which were on in 2010.
Since Ohio requires all qualified parties to nominate by primary, how can it be unconstitutional to require parties to qualify before the primary.
Federal law requires military ballots to be sent out by January 20 for a March 6, primary. Election officials will want another 3 weeks to prepare ballots and handle ballot challenges. That means the filing deadline will be in December. The November deadline gives the SOS a month to validate the petitions.
I assume the voter rolls are available for party activists to identify supporters. There were 5,476 Libertarian; 3,074 Constitution; 1,315 Green; and 790 Socialist voters in the 2010 primaries.
#4, no one is telling Ohio that is must require that all parties nominate by primary. Courts struck down early petitions for parties to qualify in some other states that provided that all newly-qualifying parties must nominate by primary. Those states were Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, and Tennessee. Also, twice, federal courts struck down South Carolina’s law saying all parties must hold certain types of organizing meetings in the spring which were earlier than the state’s own petition deadline. Telling a party that it can’t be on the general election ballot unless it nominates by primary is like the famous expression from the Vietnam War, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
The legislatures of Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada simply then provided that newly-qualifying parties don’t necessarily need to nominate by primary; they nominate by convention, which of course saves money for election administrators. And it was the US Supreme Court itself that ordered Ohio to put the American Independent Party on the Ohio ballot in 1968 in Williams v Rhodes, even though that party didn’t receive a primary in Ohio. Also in 1970 a 3-judge US District Court put the Socialist Labor Party on the Ohio ballot even though it wasn’t given a primary. And in 1976 a state court put the American Independent Party on the ballot and it didn’t have a primary that year. And in 1996 the Ohio Secretary of State put the Reform Party on the ballot even though it was also too late to have its own primary. And before 1951, Ohio let all newly-qualifying parties on the ballot without their own primary.
This new bill in Ohio isn’t much better than the old law that was thrown out.
#5 When Ohio recognizes a political party, it is on the basis of there existing a number of voters who associate with the party. It is entirely reasonable that Ohio provides those who support the party the opportunity to fully participate in the nomination of the party’s candidates.
As the Supreme Court said in American Party of Texas vs. White, “It is too plain for argument … that the State may limit each political party to one candidate for each office on the ballot and may insist that intraparty competition be settled before the general election by primary election …”
Ohio is saying that you can’t be treated like a party unless you act like a party. Ohio has procedures for independent candidates qualifying for the ballot.
#7, the Ohio independent candidate procedures do not allow a partisan label on the ballot, so they are no substitute for minor party ballot access. If that were not true, the 6th circuit would not have invalidated the party petition law, but they did.
Also, that 1974 American Party of Texas v White sentence you quoted is dicta. No one in the Texas lawsuit was arguing for the right of parties to nominate by convention. The American Party was demanding the right to have a government-financed primary, and the other two minor parties in the case didn’t have any complaints about how they nominate.
So are the four minor parties likely to have status again for 2012?
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#8 There is no reason that the qualifying procedure for a candidate running independently from any party should be of utility to party candidates.
That is the point. If you want recognition as a party, you need to act like a party, and let voters who choose to affiliate with the party choose the nominees of the parties, and not the party bosses.
If you don’t want to act like a political party, there is the independent route.
#11, under top-two there is a complete separation between party organizations and the official ballot. The purpose of a party label under top-two is to give the voters of sense of what the candidate believes. The label and the organization are completely divorced. The Coffee Party has a philosophy and it denies equal protection for Mike Chamness to be denied the ability to communicate his sympathies for those ideas on the ballot, when other candidates do get to express themselves on the ballot.