North Dakota Representative Corey Mock has introduced a bill to make it easier for parties to nominate candidates. Currently North Dakota is the only state that says a ballot-qualified party can’t nominate unless a certain minimum number of votes choose to vote in that party’s primary. Other states that had such laws in the past have repealed them. The bill number hasn’t been assigned yet.
Because of the current North Dakota restriction, no minor party candidates for the legislature have been on the November ballot since 1976. The current law requires only 300 primary votes for statewide candidates, and normally any party has that many voters in its primary, and statewide candidates therefore do qualify for the general election. But for legislature, the current law requires approximately 120 primary voters within that district to choose that party’s primary ballot. North Dakota legislative districts have such low populations, this means approximately 10% to 15% of all the primary voters in that district must choose the minor party’s primary ballot, which is not realistic. North Dakota has open primaries and all voters on primary day are free to choose any party’s primary ballot.
The bill also slightly changes the number of signatures needed for a new party to qualify. Current law requires exactly 7,000 signatures. The bill changes this to 1% of the state’s population at the last sentence. If the bill were enacted, the requirement would be 6,745 signatures.