The Common Sense Party is trying to qualify in California.  Its website says it has 20,415 registered members, as of April 11.  Back on February 18, the Secretary of State’s Report of Registration showed the party had 10,859 registered members, so it appears the party is actively working to increase its registration.

If its registration rises to .33% of the state total (not counting “unknown party” registrants) by July 6, 2020, it will be able to place a presidential nominee on the November 2020 ballot.

No one can know exactly how many registrations will be needed by July 6, because the base for the percentage is the number of registered voters (not counting unknown voters) as of that date, which of course, is in the future.  Generally it is not good policy for a ballot access requirement to be based on a future piece of data, because this means the group can’t know what the requirement is, until it is too late to meet it.  But of course the group can estimate.  It is estimating 67,000 or so.

California residents can register on-line, or can change their registration from one party to another on-line, so that makes it possible for the party to be increasing its registration even in the health crisis.  No new party has qualified in California via a registration drive since 1995, when the Natural Law Party and the Reform Party qualified.  Both of them have since lost their qualified status.

According to this story, the Wisconsin Libertarian Party has asked the state to suspend petitioning for the general election, or to deem any parties that were ballot-qualified in 2018 to also be ballot-qualified for 2020 as well.

Currently, the only parties that are ballot-qualified in Wisconsin are Democratic, Republican, and Constitution.  The Libertarian and Green Parties went off the ballot in November 2018 because they had no nominees for statewide office who polled as much as 1% of the vote.  Both parties had gubernatorial nominees, but no nominees for any other statewide office.  The gubernatorial election of 2018 was extremely hotly-contested between the two major parties, and the vote was very close, and in conditions like that, the minor party vote is generally smaller than normal.

The Constitution Party survived 2018 because it ran for Attorney General and Treasurer, and received over 1% for both.

On April 10, Michigan filed this brief in Esshaki v Whitman, e.d., 2:20cv-10831.  This is the case in which a Republican U.S. House candidate is attacking the requirement that he submit 1,000 valid signatures to get on the primary ballot, by April 21.

The state barely acknowledges the health crisis.  It says the burden on him is not severe.  It says he should have gathered his signatures before the health crisis broke out.  It says he is always free to be a write-in candidate in the primary.  It says the state must guard against ballot-crowding and frivolous candidates.

The state says already 24 primary candidates for U.S. House have managed to file petitions.  It does not say that Michigan has 14 U.S. House seats, so that is only about one and two-thirds candidates from both major parties together, in the typical district.

The state’s brief doesn’t mention other states that have either reduced the number of signatures this year, or abolished petitions entirely, or extended petition deadlines.  The primary is August 4.

The oral argument will be April 15, Wednesday, at 2 p.m.