On March 17, the Minnesota House Election Finance & Policy Committee held an hour’s hearing on SF 2802, which doubles the vote test for qualified party status from 5% to 10%. The committee did not act on the bill, but seemed to indicate that the provisions of the bill will soon be amended into an omnibus election law bill, which does not exist yet.

Some of the legislators did express some sympathy for the idea of expanding the restrictive two-week petitioning period for non-presidential independent candidate petitions. It is possible that idea may be put into the omnibus bill.

There are uncontradicted court opinions that say it violates due process for a state to stiffen the definition of a qualified party, such that it threatens the status of a minor party, without giving that minor party one more election to try to surmount the new, tougher requirement. The bill would remove the Legal Marijuana Now Party from qualified status, before the 2024 election is held. That aspect of the bill would probably be struck down. In the past, when other states have made the definition of a qualified party more restrictive, and there was a qualified minor party on the ballot at that time, the states made the effective date after the next election; or if they didn’t, the state elections office, or a court, ruled they had to do that. These examples are from Alabama in 1982, Alabama in 1995, Indiana in 1980, Kansas in 1990, Michigan in 1976, Michigan in 1988, New Mexico in 1989, New York in 1935, New York in 2020, North Carolina in 1949, and Ohio in 2013.