On December 13, the General Counsel to the North Carolina State Board of Elections sent a letter to the North Carolina Green Party, making it easier for a party that had put its presidential nominee on the ballot in the last election in at least 35 states to prove that it had done this. Originally the State Board wanted such a party to obtain a notarized statement from election officials in each of the 35 states. But the new letter says that the publication of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, “Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 8, 2016”, is good enough. The letter says that because the federal government publishes this book, it can be relied on.

“Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election (for a particular election date)” is a publication that has been published continuously starting in 1920. In midterm years, the title is just “Statistics of the Congressional Election”. The 2016 version has a table in the back showing that the Green Party’s presidential nominee was on the ballot, with the party label, in 37 states plus D.C. Because the Clerk’s table is organized by party, not candidate, the “Green” presidential column doesn’t include the states in which Jill Stein was on as an independent.

The new North Carolina ballot access law defining “political party”, passed in October 2017 and effective January 1, 2018, says a party is ballot-qualified for all office if its presidential nominee was on the ballot in at least 35 states in the last presidential election. Such parties nominate by convention, their first year on the ballot; after that, by primary. Thanks to Michael Trudeau for this news.