On August 22, the Arizona Secretary of State posted the official election returns for the August 2, 2022 primary. See them here.
Under legislation passed in 2015, write-in candidates in party primaries need a very large number of write-ins, in order to qualify for the general election ballot. None of the Libertarian candidates for federal or state office polled enough write-ins, which is no surprise, because no minor party has been able to meet those requirements in any of the four primaries held since the new law passed.
For the statewide offices, the Libertarian write-in totals are: Governor Barry Hess 550, Attorney General Michael Kielsky 571, Superintendent of Public Instruction Sheila Reid-Shaver 557, Corporation Commissioner Nathan Gage Madden 216. All of them needed 3,715 write-ins. Of course, only registered Libertarians could cast a write-in vote in the Libertarian primary.
If a candidate is on the primary ballot, there is no minimum number of votes needed. Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Marc Victor was on the Libertarian primary ballot, so he only needed one vote. In the primary he received 3,065 votes.
The law is more lenient for parties that are on the ballot as a result of a petition that was completed in either of the last two elections. For these “new” parties, only one write-in vote is needed in that party’s primary. But the Libertarian Party is not a “new” party because it has been on the ballot without interruption since 1996.
Each qualified political party should be allowed to decide for itself how many write-in votes in its own primary would qualify a candidate for the ballot.
And, they should have a veto over any candidate who wins their primary to use their label in the final election. That should be for ANY type of primary, open, closed, top-x.
Any group should be able to stand 100 feet from entry to the polling places and encourage voters to vote for particular candidates.
We could call this law something catchy like the First Amendment.
INDIVIDUAL candidates are nominated / elected — NOT *parties*.
Brain DEAD MORON ballot access so-called lawyers and worse so-called judges since 1968 Williams v Rhodes – a mere 54 years.
az please take a shower.
Arizona’s ballot access law is obviously discriminatory and unreasonable. However, there are over 34 thousand registered Libertarians in the state. A concerted effort to canvass significant numbers of those folks and communicate the need to get those write-in votes seems very doable. Working just Phoenix ought to be able to generate the necessary numbers.
It seems that this is a great law which keeps libertarians from spoiling races for the GOP while still allowing the Green Pukes to spoil them for the dims. Every state should have a law like that.
As of August 2022, there were 32,600 registered Libertarians in Arizona. I only recently registered myself. Before the Primary this year, I had to write in to my county organization to get the list of local “write-in” candidates.
At the State Libertarian Web site, Barry Hess and others were on the list of candidates. It seems to me that we have a sufficient number for registered Libertarian votes. It is just a matter of informing them and motivating them to actually vote in the primaries. Am I missing something here?
Blake Masters is showing us that the Libertarian does not need to be on the ballot but need to get 100 percent behind the true national populist conservatives in the GOP the way God, Trump and Ron Paul intended.