On July 24, Greg Dorsey, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland in 2016, filed a lawsuit alleging that Maryland is violating the U.S. Constitution by requiring him to get almost four times as many signatures as an entire new party needs. New parties need 10,000 signatures, and then are free to nominate for every partisan office in the state with no more petitioning. But an independent candidate for statewide office needs approximately 38,000 signatures. The law requires a petition signed by 1% of the registered voters as of January 2016. At this point the state can’t even tell Dorsey how many signatures he needs, but it is clear that it will be approximately 38,000.
The case is Dorsey v Lamone, 1:15cv-2170. It was assigned to Judge George L. Russell, an Obama appointee. Maryland requires more signatures for an independent candidate for U.S. Senate than any other state except North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia.
Maryland in the past had equal petition requirements for minor parties and statewide independents, but in 2003 the highest state court issued an opinion which made minor party ballot access much easier. Therefore, the discriminatory aspect of Maryland ballot access is not really a deliberate decision of the state legislature, but in a very real sense, an accident of history.
The Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE) paid the filing fee for this case, and a little bit of the expenses. COFOE gets all its income from people who subscribe to Ballot Access News. COFOE hugely appreciates all those donations, which make cases such as this easier to initiate.
