The Ohio State Court of Appeals will hear Libertarian Party of Ohio v Husted on Tuesday, May 9, at 9 a.m. This case is over whether the 2013 ballot access law violates the State Constitution. The State Constitution appears to require that all qualified parties nominate by primary. But the 2013 ballot access law says newly-qualifying parties should nominate by convention, and then each convention nominee must submit his or her own small ballot access petition.

This case was filed January 19, 2016, and has moved very slowly. Before the 2016 election, the trial court had ruled that the law comports with the State Constitution. The briefs were filed in the State Court of Appeals months ago. The Ohio Constitution says, “Article V, sec. 7. All nominations for elective state, district, county and municipal office shall be made at direct primary elections or by petition as provided by law.” Past rulings of state courts in Ohio have made it obvious that “by petition” refers to independent candidates. If it is true that the legislature is free to provide that new parties may avoid a primary, then it seems obvious that the legislature could extend that exemption to all parties, new and old alike. But that would completely nullify any reason to even have that provision in the State Constitution. That Constitutional provision was passed over 100 years ago, and seems to have been passed to make it certain that the major parties could only nominate by primary.

Ohio is the only state with a State Constitutional provision that requires all parties to nominate by primary. Oklahoma’s Constitution gives the legislature authority to provide primaries for all parties if the legislature desires, but the Oklahoma Constitution does not compel the legislature to do that.

It is conceivable that the Ohio Supreme Court’s lengthy delay in ruling on reconsideration in the other Libertarian Party lawsuit is indirectly connected to this lawsuit.

No order was entered in the Montana ballot access case involving the upcoming special U.S. House election, on Friday, April 7, at least as of 7 p.m. Montana time.

Alaska Representative Gabrielle Ledoux (R-Anchorage) introduced HB 200 on March 29. It converts Alaska elections to top-two elections. The bill has a hearing on Monday, April 10, at 1 pm, in the House Judiciary Committee. The Committee will meet again on the bill on Wednesday, April 12, for a vote.
Here is the text of the bill.

The bill appears to provide for party labels on the ballots without any “prefers” verbiage, which means that if it passed as written, it would be vulnerable to a freedom of association challenge. The California and Washington top-two systems survived freedom of association challenges by providing that party labels on the ballot should be prefaced by the word “prefers” or “preference”, so as to make it clear that the parties did not nominate the listed candidates.

The bill makes it more difficult for groups to become and remain qualified parties. Currently Alaska lets a group become a qualified party if it polls 3% for a particular statewide race (the identity of the race varies each year, depending on which offices are up). But that would be deleted. The only way a group could become a qualified party would be with a registration drive. No party in Alaska has ever gained qualified status the first time via registration. The qualified parties in Alaska in the years since Alaska became a state all first gained party status by meeting the vote test. They include the Libertarian Party in 1982, the Alaskan Independence Party in 1982 (with the help of a court case), the Green Party in 1990, and the Republican Moderate Party in 1998.