North Dakota Representative Corey Mock has introduced a bill to make it easier for parties to nominate candidates. Currently North Dakota is the only state that says a ballot-qualified party can’t nominate unless a certain minimum number of votes choose to vote in that party’s primary. Other states that had such laws in the past have repealed them. The bill number hasn’t been assigned yet.
Because of the current North Dakota restriction, no minor party candidates for the legislature have been on the November ballot since 1976. The current law requires only 300 primary votes for statewide candidates, and normally any party has that many voters in its primary, and statewide candidates therefore do qualify for the general election. But for legislature, the current law requires approximately 120 primary voters within that district to choose that party’s primary ballot. North Dakota legislative districts have such low populations, this means approximately 10% to 15% of all the primary voters in that district must choose the minor party’s primary ballot, which is not realistic. North Dakota has open primaries and all voters on primary day are free to choose any party’s primary ballot.
The bill also slightly changes the number of signatures needed for a new party to qualify. Current law requires exactly 7,000 signatures. The bill changes this to 1% of the state’s population at the last sentence. If the bill were enacted, the requirement would be 6,745 signatures.
“Any other political organization is entitled to endorse candidates or have candidates petition to be included on the primary ballot in a separate section of the consolidated primary election ballot, if a petition signed by a number of qualified electors equal to at least one percent of the total resident population of this state as determined by the most recent federal decennial census is filed with the secretary of state before four p.m. of the sixty-fourth day before a primary or special election, naming the political organization, stating the platform principles of the party, and requesting the names of its candidates to be included on the state’s primary ballot in a separate section.”
Would be far better if this actually read:
“Any other political organization is entitled to endorse candidates or have candidates petition to be included on the primary ballot in a separate section of the consolidated primary election ballot, if a petition signed by a number of qualified electors equal to at least one percent of the total resident population of this state as determined by the most recent federal decennial census is filed with the secretary of state before four p.m. of the sixty-fourth day before a primary or special election, naming the political organization, stating the platform principles of the party, and requesting the names of its candidates to be included on the state’s primary ballot in a separate section, BUT NO MORE THAN SEVEN THOUSAND SIGNATURES OF QUALIFIED ELECTORS SHALL BE REQUIRED.”
A hard cap would only make this better…. in all of three years we’ll be over the current requirement of 7000 due to population growth.
The bill stands a better chance of passing as it is written. Representative Fong wants to emphasize to his fellow legislators that the petition itself is an indication that the party has substantial voter support, and therefore it is not necessary to have a second requirement for a party to show that support.
North Dakota should switch to Top 2. Very few districts are contested in the first place.
In 2016 for the House, there were 96 primary candidates for 46 seats (2.09 per seat). For the senate there were 44 candidates for 23 seats (1.91 per seat).
North Dakota already uses Top 2 for nonpartisan offices.