As a result of other states having eased their ballot access laws in 2016 and 2017, Ohio now requires more signatures to get a new party on the ballot than any other state. For 2018, Ohio requires 54,965 signatures. The only state with a higher requirement is California, which requires the group to persuade approximately 60,000 people to register into the party.
The third highest number for statewide new party ballot access in 2018 is Georgia, at 51,912 signatures.
When the current Ohio ballot access law was passed in 2013, the House passed a version of SB 193 that set the petition at one-half of 1% of the last vote cast. If that were the law, the Ohio 2018 requirement would be 27,483 signatures. Unfortunately there was a drafting error in the House version of the bill. The Senate sponsor of SB 193, Senator Bill Seitz, originally said he was satisfied with one-half of 1%. But by the time the drafting error was caught and fixed, Senator Seitz changed his mind and insisted on 1%. This does show that there was some sentiment in the Ohio legislature for an easier requirement, and if Ohio activists contact state legislators and ask for relief, that might help to get a better law.
The regime in gerrymander control will only have easier ballot access if the super-estimate is that more 3rd parties will divide the other main party more than the control regime — ie more divide and conquer stuff.
Richard:
Based on the latest registration report, isn’t the current number for California a little over 64,100 now?
It’s difficult to tell, because the current law excludes from the calculation those people who were automatically registered because the Dept. of Motor Vehicles knows about them. So one can’t use the number of registered voters as the denominator; instead the denominator is the number of registered voters who were not put on the rolls automatically.
The California program has not been implemented yet. The DMV web site says “exciting changes to arrive in April 2018”. Further, the law in effect requires a voter to fill out the additional information that is on a voter’s application, but is unnecessary for a driver’s license (party preference, e-mail address, permanent vote by mail status, language preference, and whether the licensee affirmatively declined to be registered, whether the licensee indicated that they were qualified to vote).
When Motor Voter was first enacted, many DMV’s simply made voter registration applications available, and the would send completed applications over to the voter registrar. This was not all that different from the stack of registration forms on the counter at a convenience store, other than requiring the person to send the application in.
When people fill an application in, they may have bad handwriting, or forget where they live, and since the DMV didn’t verify anything, may have used a different name than they used on their drivers license. Or people who had been waiting in line for the DMV bureaucrats, don’t want to spend any more time.
When the California program is implemented next year, prospective voters will be required to affirm that they are citizens over age 18, and have an opportunity to actively affirm that they don’t want to be registered. It will be difficult to avoid asking them the other voter-related questions.
The only persons who would be registered as “Unknown” would be those who actually skipped over the “No Party Preference” check box.
This is different than in Oregon, where the DMV just sends the licensee data to the SOS, who determines whether the person is eligible to vote and is not registered. They then inform the new voter that they are registered to vote unless they send a card back saying that they don’t want to be registered. They also have to send the card back if they want to declare a party affiliation.