On June 11, U.S. District Court Judge Lance E. Walker, a Trump appointee, issued an order in Baines v Dunlap, 1:19cv-509. This Libertarian Party lawsuit had been filed in late 2019, to try to oveturn these Maine laws: (1) the law that says when a party goes off the ballot, all its members are converted to independents, regardless of the wishes of such voters; (2) the January deadline for a new party to qualify; (3) the number of signatures needed to get a member of a small party on his or her own party’s primary ballot; (4) the method by which a new party qualifies, to obtain 5,000 registered members.
The order denies injunctive relief, and therefore the Libertarian Party failed to become ballot-qualified again. However, the order says it is probably unconstitutional for the state to convert party members to independents when a party goes off the ballot. The order suggests that if the party had filed this lawsuit early in 2019, it could probably have won an injunction restoring all the party’s registered members. But it points out that the party waited until December 2019 to file the lawsuit, and by now the members have been registered outside the party for over a year, and may have since joined other parties.
The order does not discuss the January deadline for new parties to qualify, and says very little about the other two issues in the case. The lawsuit will be adjudicated later in the year, but in the meantime the party is not on the ballot, and will need to circulate the independent presidential petition in order to be on the 2020 ballot for president. That petition requires 4,000 signatures, due July 25.
Other states that convert registered members of parties to independents when the party goes off the ballot are Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. In Oklahoma, when a party goes off the ballot, although it loses its registrants, it can then immediately request the they be allowed to re-register into the party.
