On June 3, Kenneth Blevens, Libertarian Party nominee for U.S. Senate in 2010, filed a motion in state court to require that in future elections, all candidates have a chance to be listed first on general election ballots. Blevens had filed his lawsuit in 2010, but it was too close to the election to ask for any relief in the 2010 election. The case is Blevens v New Hampshire Secretary of State, Merrimack County 217-2010-cv-0759.

In 2006 the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled in Akins v Secretary of State that the state must treat each candidate equally, in the matter of placement on the ballot. As a result, New Hampshire now rotates party columns, so that in one-third of the state, the Democratic Party column is listed first; in one-third of the state the Republican Party column is listed first; and in the remaining third of the state, the column in which all minor party and independent candidates are placed is listed first. That last column is headed “Other Candidates.”

The problem is two-fold: (1) squeezing all minor party and independent candidates into the same column and denying them their own separate column heading is not equal; (2) aside from that, the November 2010 ballot did not rotate the names of the candidates within that “Other Column”, so that Blevens was always on the bottom within that column (although that column only had two U.S. Senate candidates within it).

New Hampshire is the only state that, as a matter of state policy, never gives a party column heading to an unqualified party. However, in New Jersey, where each county has its own ballot design, most New Jersey counties also won’t give a party column heading to unqualified parties. New York also has bad ballot format, but at least New York does give a party column to some of the unqualified parties.