North Carolina Representative Ken Goodman (D-Rockingham) has told the press in 2017 he will introduce a bill to help independent candidates. He is rightly critical of the extremely repressive ballot access requirements in North Carolina for independent candidates. They are so severe, no independent has ever appeared on a government-printed North Carolina ballot for Governor, U.S. Senator, or U.S. House. And the only time the independent presidential petition was used successfully was in 1992, when Ross Perot complied.

Unfortunately, Representative Goodman wants to introduce a bill in 2017 saying all independent candidates would run in a primary that was for independent voters, and the person who won that primary would be on the November ballot with no petition. There are two problems with this idea: (1) the filing deadline for a North Carolina primary is in early December of the year before the election; (2) independent voters, almost by definition, are not associated with each other, and there is no logical underpinning to treating them as a party. In 1980, the North Carolina petition deadline for independent candidates was declared unconstitutionally early, and that deadline was in April. If April of the election year was too early, surely December of the year before the election could not stand.

The purpose of the independent candidate ballot access procedures is to give general election voters another option, if voters are unhappy with all the party nominees for any particular office.

Although Representative Goodman says he wants to help independent voters, he is not among the 28 North Carolina Representatives who co-sponsored HB 509 in the current session.

On May 21, former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who is seeking the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nomination, posted on facebook a criticism of Ohio Governor John Kasich, concerning Kasich’s record on ballot access for new and minor political parties. Weld wrote, “I am now aware that Governor Kasich has taken actions to make ballot access in Ohio much more difficult and costly for Libertarians. At no point did I have any knowledge about efforts to restrict ballot access. Of course, we all need to fight for ballot access in every state, including helping raise the funds necessary for that effort. You have my word that I will help ensure ballot access – and I’m a pretty good fighter.”

The Weld message is mostly directed at Libertarian Party members, but it is a public statement made to a general audience.

Jim Sullivan has this op-ed in the Boston Herald. The first half talks about the impact of the Libertarian Party if it nominates William Weld for vice-president. The latter half criticizes the party for its policy during the last ten years of deliberately avoiding being ballot-qualified.

For the last ten years, the Massachusetts Libertarian Party has been led by individuals who try to avoid qualified status. This policy suffers from these defects: (1) it keeps the party from having its own checkbox on the voter registration form, so its registration (once the third highest of any state Libertarian Party) has plummeted; (2) it requires the party to submit 10,000 valid signatures to place its presidential nominee on the ballot; (3) it deprives the party of its own presidential primary.

Leaders of the Massachusetts Libertarian Party say they avoid being qualified because: (1) when a party is qualified, state law makes it very difficult for its own members to get on its own primary ballot (except presidential candidates can get on a presidential primary ballot just by request); (2) state law forces ballot-qualified parties to elect party officers in the primary, instead of at party meetings. The second problem could be overcome with a lawsuit, because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 1989 in Eu v San Francisco County Central Committee that states cannot tell parties how to be organized. The first problem is a genuine problem, but it could potentially be overcome by activism to change the primary ballot access laws.