On March 5, the Arkansas Supreme Court invalidated two restrictions on initiative petitions, but upheld some other restrictions. All of the restrictions challenged in the lawsuit had been passed in 2013. The case is McDaniel v Spencer, cv-14-599. Here is the 28-page decision.

The restrictions struck down are: (1) the law that says after the petition is filed, the organization sponsoring the petition cannot collect any more signatures until election officials finish counting how many signatures in the first batch are valid; (2) the law that says if a petition sheet has signatures of residents of more than one county, then the entire sheet is invalid.

The restrictions upheld are: (1) a requirement that each signer include his or her date of birth on the petition; (2) extensive record-keeping for initiative proponents who use paid circulators; (3) a requirement that each paid circulator submit a picture that is less than 3 months old; (4) a ban on paid circulators previously convicted of certain crimes; (5) the law that if any signer is “disabled” and therefore can’t fill in all the blanks on the petition, the circulator who helps fill in some blanks must sign and print his or her name on the margin of the petition next to the signature of the assisted signer; (6) the law that all paid circulators must reveal their current residence address as well as their permanent address.

The Arkansas Supreme Court has seven members. Three justices would have invalidated all the challenged laws; two justices would have upheld all the challenged laws; only the remaining two justices agree with the entire decision that some laws are valid and others are invalid.

On March 6, the Oklahoma Libertarian Party filed the notice of intent to try to qualify for the 2016 ballot. Oklahoma election law requires newly-qualifying parties to notify the state when they start. The petition is due March 1, 2016. Oklahoma requires groups to finish the petition within one year, but the group sets its own one-year petitioning period.

No party has successfully petitioned in Oklahoma since 2000, when the Libertarian and Reform Parties qualified.

The Georgia Green Party has never been on the ballot for statewide office. The law requires 51,912 valid signatures for 2016, and the petition can circulate from April 2015 to July 2016. The party is thinking about working on the petition.

One advantage of the party starting to circulate this petition is that it will obtain evidence about the difficulty of petitioning in Georgia. Shopping centers in Georgia routinely do not permit petitioning on their property. Also, because Georgia doesn’t have the initiative process, and because primary candidates don’t petition to get on the primary ballot, very few Georgia voters ever encounter anyone asking for their signature on a ballot access petition of any type. The Green Party’s experience will enable it to supply evidence in the pending ballot access lawsuit, Green Party of Georgia v Secretary of State, now in U.S. District Court. The judge who has jurisdiction over the case has not done anything with it in the last eight months, but eventually there will be a trial. The judge had originally dismissed the case without a trial, but last year the Eleventh Circuit reversed that and said the party is entitled to a trial. The Constitution Party is a co-plaintiff.