North Carolina campaign finance laws allow individuals to give more money to qualify parties than to unqualified parties. Early this year the Constitution Party filed a federal lawsuit against that disparity. The case, Constitution Party v Strach, w.d., 3:18cv-6, now has a trial date of January 22, 2019, in Charlotte. Discovery will be completed by August 2018.
On April 5, a New Mexico lower court upheld the ability of Joseph Cervantes to remain on the June 2018 Democratic primary ballot as a candidate for Governor. One of his Democratic opponents, Jeff Apodaca, had sued the Secretary of State, claiming that she had improperly accepted Cervantes’ petition even though it didn’t have enough valid signatures. But Apodaca didn’t serve notice of his lawsuit on the Attorney General, so his suit was dismissed. See this story.
Bills in each house of the California legislature to ban paying circulators on any basis except hourly are both advancing. AB 1947 passed the Assembly Elections Committee on March 21. SB 1394 passed the Senate Elections Committee on April 3. Both bills apply to initiative, referendum, and recall petitions, but not to independent presidential candidate petitions nor petitions to create a new party.
Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a virtually identical bill in 2011.
The Senate Committee analysis has an excellent list of cases in which similar laws have been struck down. See it here. Click on the link.
This Los Angeles Times story about California’s redesigned voter registration form also discusses the American Independent Party. The article reveal that some California county election officials want the legislature to pass a law making it illegal for any party to have the word “Independent” in its name.
Tennessee has a law making it illegal for any party to have the word “independent” in its name, but that law was held unconstitutional by a U.S. District Court a few years ago as a violation of free speech. Later the Sixth Circuit reversed that on the grounds that none of the plaintiff political parties had standing to challenge that law, because neither of them had “independent” in their names. The plaintiff political parties in that case were the Green Party and the Constitution Party.
Nevada has two methods for a party to retain its qualified status. It can either run a candidate for any partisan office who polls votes equal to 1% of the number of votes cast in the entire state for U.S. House, or it can have registered members that are equal to at least 1% of the state total.
The Libertarian Party, in the March 2018 voter registration tally, for the first time has registration above 1% of the state total. There is no real practical significance for the party, because it always easily passes the alternate vote test. But, theoretically, the party could now remain on the ballot even if it had no candidates. Of course it is conceivable that its registration total might dip below 1% in the future, so it would then again need to pass the vote test. Thanks to Andy Craig for this information.
