On January 4, Indiana State Senator Greg Walker introduced a bill to improve ballot access, SB 328. Here is the text of the bill. Currently the 2018 Indiana petition requirement for statewide independent candidates and nominees of unqualified parties is 26,700 signatures. The bill would change that to 13,189 signatures for 2018, and the number required in 2020 would be a lower number, which cannot be known exactly until after the 2018 election is held. The new formula for the number of signatures in a midterm year would be one-half of 1% of the total vote cast for Attorney General, an office that is up only in presidential years. For getting on in a presidential year, the petition would be one-half of 1% of the highest vote cast for the three offices of Secretary of State, Auditor, and Treasurer (whichever one had the highest total vote cast). Those three offices are only up in midterm years. If SB 328 had been in effect in 2016, 6,675 signatures would have been needed.
The vote test would become more flexible. Currently Indiana is one of only two states in which it is impossible for a group to become a qualified party during a presidential election year. The other such state is New York. The bill changes the vote test so a group could become a qualified party during a presidential election year.
The old vote test is that a group must have polled 2% for Secretary of State, an office that is only up in a midterm year. The bill says the new vote test would be one-half of 1% for whichever of these offices receives the highest number of votes cast: Secretary of State, Auditor, Treasurer, or Attorney General. Attorney General is elected in presidential years, and the other three offices are elected in midterm years. Lowering the vote test from 2% to one-half of 1% is a liberalization, of course. However, a party that wanted to pass the vote test could not know in advance of the election which of the three midterm offices would received the highest vote total, so to be safe, it would need to run nominees for Auditor, Treasurer, and Secretary of State in every midterm year. In a presidential year, it would be required to run someone for Attorney General, because that would the only office for which the vote test applies.
Indiana badly needs reform. It is the only state in which Ralph Nader never got on the ballot in any of his presidential runs that has not eased the number of signatures since Nader’s last runs. The other states in which Nader never got on the ballot are North Carolina, Oklahoma and Georgia, and those three states have reduced the number of signatures during the last few years. Also Indiana is one of only four states in which Ron Paul didn’t get on the ballot when he was the Libertarian nominee in 1988, and the other three states that kept Paul off have also reduced the number of signatures since he ran. Those other states that excluded Paul are West Virginia, Missouri, and North Carolina.
Running state-wide candidates in those three races every four years would be hard for any third-party not the Libertarians here (and it might even be hard for them, but they seem to always have the candidates in those races), but on the whole this does look much better than the current system (though to be fair, considering the current system, that might not be saying a lot). This is certainly something I need to follow carefully, because if passed this could be a huge help to all budding Indiana third-parties, from the Constitution to the Indiana Green Party. Thank you for reporting on it, Richard!
Each OFFICE is separate.
PR and AppV
Indiana should eliminate segregated partisan primaries, and let each candidate qualify for the ballot as an individual.
It was increased to stop the American Party from qualifying for the ballot every four years, and to stop the LP from qualifying.
Indiana increased the petition and the vote test from one-half of 1%, to 2%, in 1980. The sponsor of the bill was irked that an independent candidate for Mayor in a partisan race in Lake County had got on the ballot. In 1980, neither the American Party nor the Libertarian Party were ballot-qualified in Indiana. Because the increase in the petition didn’t take effect until 1983, and the increase in the vote test didn’t take effect until 1987, both the American Party and the Libertarian Party did become qualified in 1982, but that was after the bill had passed.
I think most of what occurs that’s screwy in Indiana politics is due to Lake County.
“Running state-wide candidates in those three races every four years would be hard for any third-party…
You mean in other words the law actually requires these organizations to be bona fide political parties instead of fly by night operations every 4 years?
@rj1 There isn’t a single state where both the DEMs and GOP run a candidate in every race in the state. Lots of times that how 3rd parties initially get on the ballot if they only have to run against one large party candidate.
“@rj1 There isn’t a single state where both the DEMs and GOP run a candidate in every race in the state.”
Your reading comprehension is lacking. The original point was in regards to statewide candidates only. In Indiana in the 2016 and 2014 elections, the Republicans, Democrats had a candidate in every single statewide office election, which was 7 individual races. The Libertarians even had candidates in 5.
If you can’t produce a candidate for say governor, you’re not a political party in my opinion.
And that is where I think your point of view is completely lacking. You sound like the type of person who insults third-parties because they can’t “get elected” while at the same time expecting them to run in statewide races in states with awful ballot-access laws. There are some states where one of the two “major” parties will let a state-wide seat go uncontested. Usually not governor, but that still does happen. It’s absurd to think that unless a party runs state-wide candidates in every state-wide race every single election cycle, they don’t count as a real political party. It’s just stupid thinking, as far as I’m concerned.
Are the multitude of small parties who run people for U.S. House seats, in-state Senate and Representative seats, and for local governments just because they potentially don’t run for governor? It’s completely asinine.