Montana Representative Denise Hayman (D-Bozeman), the Democratic Party Whip, has introduced HB 647. It would increase the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party from 5,000 signatures to 5% of the vote cast for the winning gubernatorial candidate. It would also outlaw using out-of-state circulators for the party petition, and would forbid paying them on a per-signature basis.

If this bill passed, Montana would have the nation’s highest mandatory petition requirement for a new party to get on the ballot, for office other than president. The 2020 petition would be 12,798 valid signatures, due in March. That would be 2.57% of the vote cast for president in 2016. Even the states that have 3% petitions all base them on turnout in midterm years, but Montana elects its Governors in presidential years, when turnout is higher.

Republicans have a majority in both houses of the Montana legislature. The Montana Democratic Party sued to get the Green Party off the ballot in 2018, and this bill seems to have the partisan intent of keeping the Green Party off the ballot in the future. The Green Party is already in federal court against the existing law, which has an unequal distribution requirement and a deadline that is probably unconstitutionally early.

The bill not only retains the existing distribution requirement, it makes it even more difficult, by eliminating the cap of 150 signatures per legislative district.

The California legislature is currently considering SB 27, which says that candidates may not appear on a presidential primary ballot if they have not released their income tax returns for the last five years. The California Constitution, Article II, sec. 5(c), says, “The candidates on the ballot are those found by the Secretary of State to be recognized candidates throughout the nation or throughout California.”

When the Senate Elections Committee passed SB 27 on March 19, no one at the hearing mentioned the California Constitution. Instead all of the testimony on both sides concerned the U.S. Constitution. The analysis of the bill did not mention the California Constitutional provision.

Please weigh in and express an opinion about the relationship between SB 27 and the California Constitution.

The April 8, 2019 issue of The Nation has an article by Maurice Mitchell and Dan Cantor, in support of fusion (letting two parties jointly nominate the same candidate). This is the second article in defense of fusion that The Nation has carried this year.

The article is behind a pay wall, so unless you are a Nation subscriber, it probably can’t be read. The article has a calm tone, reflecting the reality that fusion is almost surely safe in New York state for now. The article is also interesting because it shows that the title of Mitchell is “National Director” of the Working Families Party, and that Dan Cantor is “Chair of the Working Families National Committee.” It is apparently a recent transition for the Working Families Party, that it has a national structure, instead of being a loose group of associated state parties.