WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE REPEALS LAW THAT ALMOST KEPT GREEN PARTY OFF 2024 BALLOT
On October 14, the Wisconsin legislature passed AB 149, which repeals a law that forced qualified parties to run candidates for the legislature if they wanted to be on the ballot for president.
The law says that qualified parties must choose their presidential elector candidates at an October meeting of the party’s legislators or their nominees for the legislature. The meeting must be in the state capitol. The law was passed in 1878 and had not been enforced in recent years. Qualified minor parties don’t generally have any candidates for the Wisconsin legislature, because it is difficult for their members to get on their own party’s primary ballot. For instance, in 2024, none of the three minor parties (Green, Constitution, and Libertarian) had any nominees for the legislature. Their candidates need 200 signatures to get on the primary ballot for State House, and 400 for State Senate.
In 2024, an employee of the Democratic National Committee who lives in Wisconsin filed a legal document asking the Elections Commission to keep Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee, off the ballot because the Green Party had not chosen its presidential elector candidates according to the law, because it couldn’t. The Commission refused to remove Stein. If it had done so, logically it should also have removed the Libertarian and Constitution Party presidential nominees from the ballot, because their parties didn’t follow the law either.
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