The Kansas Senate Ethics, Elections & Local Government Committee has introduced SB 116. It lowers the petition to recognize a new party from 2% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 1%. It also expands the petitioning period from six months to one year.
This bill is identical to HB 2113, so this idea has now been introduced in both houses. Thanks to Nick Blessing for this news. UPDATE: HB 2113 has a hearing on Tuesday, February 12, at 3:30 pm.
Arkansas Senator Trent Garner (R-El Dorado) has introduced SB 276, which moves the primary for all office form May to February. Senator Garner is also the Senator who is sponsoring the bill to almost triple the number of signatures for newly-qualifying parties.
If SB 276 passed, the petition deadline for new parties would move from January (already too early to be constitutional) to October of the year before the election.
Nineteen Democratic members of Congress from New York have signed a letter, urging the legislature not to ban fusion. The signers include both of New York’s U.S. Senators. See this story.
On February 6, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed HB 1152. It moves the non-presidential independent candidate petition deadline form March to May.
On February 6, the Arkansas House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee passed SB 163, the bill that raises the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party from 10,000 signatures to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. The bill passed on a voice vote, so there is no specific tally, but it appeared all the Democrats, and a few Republicans, voted against the bill. The committee has 20 members.
The sponsor of the bill, Senator Trent Garner, claimed that the 2006 decision striking down the 3% petition that was in effect then has been overruled. That is not true. There have been no Eighth Circuit opinions on the number of signatures needed for new parties since 1980, when the North Dakota party petition of 15,000 signatures was struck down in McLain v Meier. And many U.S. District Courts inside the Eighth Circuit have issued favorable rulings in recent years. In 2018 a U.S. District Court in South Dakota struck down the South Dakota party petition rules, even though the old law had been used successfully several times by the Libertarian and Constitution Parties. In 2018 a U.S. District Court in Nebraska struck down the 10% petition for independent candidates in that state. Even in Arkansas, last year a U.S. District Court struck down the January petition deadline.
During the period when Arkansas last had a 3% petition for new parties, 1977 through 2006, not once did a newly-qualifying party manage to complete the petition. Even the Reform Party failed in 1996, but a court put it on the ballot and struck down the law, but the legislature ignored the decision until the state was sued again in 2006.
