Utah Representative Bruce Cutler (R-Murray) is about to introduce a bill to abolish the straight-ticket device. The bill doesn’t have a bill number yet. Thanks to Electionline for this news.
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The Centrist Project has changed its name to Unite America. It is a group that is grooming independent candidates to run for Congress and state legislatures in 2018 and beyond.
On January 4, Indiana State Senator Greg Walker introduced a bill to improve ballot access, SB 328. Here is the text of the bill. Currently the 2018 Indiana petition requirement for statewide independent candidates and nominees of unqualified parties is 26,700 signatures. The bill would change that to 13,189 signatures for 2018, and the number required in 2020 would be a lower number, which cannot be known exactly until after the 2018 election is held. The new formula for the number of signatures in a midterm year would be one-half of 1% of the total vote cast for Attorney General, an office that is up only in presidential years. For getting on in a presidential year, the petition would be one-half of 1% of the highest vote cast for the three offices of Secretary of State, Auditor, and Treasurer (whichever one had the highest total vote cast). Those three offices are only up in midterm years. If SB 328 had been in effect in 2016, 6,675 signatures would have been needed.
The vote test would become more flexible. Currently Indiana is one of only two states in which it is impossible for a group to become a qualified party during a presidential election year. The other such state is New York. The bill changes the vote test so a group could become a qualified party during a presidential election year.
The old vote test is that a group must have polled 2% for Secretary of State, an office that is only up in a midterm year. The bill says the new vote test would be one-half of 1% for whichever of these offices receives the highest number of votes cast: Secretary of State, Auditor, Treasurer, or Attorney General. Attorney General is elected in presidential years, and the other three offices are elected in midterm years. Lowering the vote test from 2% to one-half of 1% is a liberalization, of course. However, a party that wanted to pass the vote test could not know in advance of the election which of the three midterm offices would received the highest vote total, so to be safe, it would need to run nominees for Auditor, Treasurer, and Secretary of State in every midterm year. In a presidential year, it would be required to run someone for Attorney General, because that would the only office for which the vote test applies.
Indiana badly needs reform. It is the only state in which Ralph Nader never got on the ballot in any of his presidential runs that has not eased the number of signatures since Nader’s last runs. The other states in which Nader never got on the ballot are North Carolina, Oklahoma and Georgia, and those three states have reduced the number of signatures during the last few years. Also Indiana is one of only four states in which Ron Paul didn’t get on the ballot when he was the Libertarian nominee in 1988, and the other three states that kept Paul off have also reduced the number of signatures since he ran. Those other states that excluded Paul are West Virginia, Missouri, and North Carolina.
On January 3, the North Carolina Constitution Party filed a federal lawsuit against a state campaign finance law that does not let individuals donate as much money to an unqualified party as to a qualified party. Constitution Party of N.C. v Strach, w.d., 3:18cv-6. It is assigned to Judge Graham Mullen, a Bush Sr. appointee. Here is the Complaint.
The U.S. Supreme Court has made a clear that the only constitutional justification for limits on donations to political parties is to prevent bribery and corruption. The more power a political party has, the more justification there is to limit donations, according to the Court. So it makes no sense for any state to set a lower limit for parties with virtually no political power, compared to limits on the major parties.
The court battle over the question of the identity of the legal officers of the New York Reform Party is not over. See this story.