On March 18, an Arizona state trial court held arguments in Arizona Clean Elections Commission v Fontes, cv2025-064149. According to this story, the hearing did not go well for the party.
On March 18, an Arizona state trial court held arguments in Arizona Clean Elections Commission v Fontes, cv2025-064149. According to this story, the hearing did not go well for the party.
I forgot, did anyone predict this in BAN comments on past posts?
We in the Arizona Libertarian Party have been disadvantaged by a different mistake the Secretary of State made last fall. Read Arizona Revised Statutes 16-804 and you’ll see that last fall Fontes should have declared the No Labels/AIP a party entitled to continued representation on the ballot like the Libertarians based on having more than 2/3 of 1% of the voters. This party has more voters than the Libertarians but our candidates have to get more signatures to get on the ballot than their candidates do. They are being treated like the tiny Green Party. That also means their write-in candidates can win primaries with only one or two votes while our write-in candidates have to get as many votes as they would have had to get signatures as. Libertarian would need to get on the ballot. I realize that this is very hard for anyone but election law specialists to understand but we Libertarians should have sued over this because we are not being treated fairly when the SecState favors the NL/AIP
LiF, isn’t there an exception for “new” parties? Or, am I thinking of the wrong state?
If I’m thinking of the wrong state, why didn’t the libertarians sue, and is it too late for them to sue now?
During the court hearing, the lawyer for the state said that the Secretary of State knows that the No Labels/AIP should now be in the category of parties entitled to continued representation on the ballot and not be a new party, with the implication that this was not done because of the ongoing litigation. As Libertarians, we are for relaxed ballot access rules and we recognize the other party’s candidates relied on what we believe is the Secretary of State’s error, so we are not going to sue. (It would be costly to do so.) Tomorrow at 5 pm, all candidates must turn in their signatures, and the judge will rule by Wednesday, so we are waiting to see what happens. At this point it would seem that under our current onerous ballot access, only write-in candidates for the Green Party, which has only 0.12% of the voters should be eligible to win their primaries. This is not theoretical: in last year’s special election for Congress, the Libertarians, Greens and No Labels parties had primaries with write-in candidates. The Libertarian candidate didn’t make the general election ballot even though he got more write-in votes than the Green and No Labels primary “winners.” (The No Labels candidate got one vote!)
Sounds like they just slid in where they fit in. Kinda like when some greasy dude says just the tip and then it just slips all the way in. Oopsie…