In early 2011, the Florida legislature passed HB 1355, which said that ballot-qualified parties could not place their presidential nominee on the ballot unless the FEC recognized that party as a “national committee”, or unless the party submitted a petition signed by 1% of the number of registered voters. The bill was so unclear, it did not even specify whether this petition should name the presidential nominee or not.
The Federal Election web page lists only the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and Reform Parties as national committees. Scroll down to “III. Political Party Committees.” Under the chart there is a footnote, marked with a double asterisk, naming the parties other than Democratic and Republican.
The FEC granted national committee status to the Socialist Party in December 1980, and to the Natural Law Party in late September 1992, and has never formally revoked their status. But the web page doesn’t list them because they haven’t filed financial reports recently. FEC officials say it is ambiguous whether those two parties are still “national committees.” Obviously, if the FEC doesn’t know which parties are national committees, it is absurd for Florida to use that criterion for ballot access.
A further absurdity is that the Reform Party in each of the last two presidential elections polled under 1,000 votes in the entire nation for its presidential nominee, yet under Florida’s law, it is safely on the ballot this year. Several parties polled substantially more votes for President in 2012 than the Reform Party did. The Peace & Freedom Party polled 67,037 for Roseanne Barr; the Justice Party polled 40,257 for Rocky Anderson; and America’s Independent Party polled 39,997 for Thomas Hoefling. All three of those parties were on the 2012 ballot for President in Florida because in 2011 the Secretary of State decided not to enforce the FEC-recognition law. But under the new strict behavior of the Florida Secretary of State, they do not qualify.
