On June 7, the Colorado Secretary of State determined that the Unity Party has the needed 1,000 registrations to become a qualified party. See this press release from the Secretary of State’s office.

Colorado won’t keep track of the number of registered voters in unqualified parties, unless that unqualified party had previously placed a statewide nominee on the ballot. The Unity Party nominee for U.S. Senate petitioned onto the 2014 ballot, and also the 2016 ballot, so it had the right to a tally.

The only other parties that have become ballot-qualified in Colorado by this method have been the Libertarian, Green, and Constitution Parties. Several other qualified minor parties in the past got on by the alternate method of collecting 10,000 signatures. The most recent instance was in 2011 when Americans Elect qualified. Thanks to Independent Political Report for this news.

On June 6, California held a special U.S. House election run-off in the 34th district. Here is a link to the California Secretary of State’s web page, showing the votes. The race was between two Democrats. Although not all votes have been counted yet, so far only 32,869 votes are tallied for both of the two candidates (Jimmy Gomez 19,761; Robert Lee Ahn 13,108).

In November 2016, 159,156 votes were cast for this office. The November 2016 race was also between two Democrats, with voters not allowed to vote for anyone else.

The Montana special U.S. House election of May 25, 2017, had a turnout of 383,267 votes. However, to be fair, the Montana U.S. House district has a greater population than any other U.S. House district. In the Montana election, voters had a choice of three parties on the ballot, and write-in space was on the ballot.

In the Kansas special U.S. House election of April 11, 2017, the total vote cast for each of the three candidates on the ballot was 122,594. The Kansas ballot also had write-in space, but no declared write-in filed, so no one can know how many write-ins were cast.

On June 7, the Maine Joint Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee passed LD 1571, after amending it so that it makes only modest improvements to the party qualification and retention process. The original version of the bill had made bigger improvements.

The bill makes it clear that the Libertarian Party is to be considered a qualified party for the 2018 election. But in 2018, both the Libertarian Party and the Green Party must have at least 10,000 registered members who actually go to the polls and vote, in order to remain on for 2020. This is the same requirement as in existing law, except that in the existing law a party must meet that requirement in its first year on the ballot, but the bill says in the case of a newly-qualifying party, that party need not meet that test until its second election year on the ballot.

The original version of the bill had said that any party can remain on the ballot if it has 5,000 registered members, without specifying that they must be individuals who actually cast a ballot. But that provision was deleted from the bill.

The amended bill makes a small improvement in the deadline for qualifying as a new party. Existing law says that deadline is December 1 of the year before the election. The bill changes that to January 2 of the election year.

This bill exists because in 2016, a U.S. District Court enjoined the December (of the odd year before the election) deadline for qualifying as a new party. The court said that deadline was probably unconstitutional, but did not actually make a decision about declaratory relief. Assuming the bill passes, the new deadline, January of the election year, will still probably be held unconstitutional if a new lawsuit is ever filed, but because the Libertarian Party is now on the ballot, of course the Libertarian Party no longer has any complaint. The original version of the bill moved the deadline to June and said newly-qualifying parties could nominate by convention, but that part has been deleted from the bill.