On January 31, the Montana House State Administration Committee passed HB 207, which increases the petition requirement for independent legislative candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties from 5% of the winning candidate’s vote in the last election, to 10% of the same base. Furthermore, only active registered voters could sign. Current law lets inactive voters sign. Also the bill shrinks the petitioning period, by changing the start date from January 9 to February 19. See this story.

The bill would be unconstitutional. No federal court has ever upheld a candidate petition requirement in excess of 5% of the number of registered voters. All of the independent petition requirements that were ever in excess of 5% have been struck down. Courts in Arkansas, Illinois, North Carolina, and Ohio issued those opinions.

Montana could not argue that the ballot is crowded with two many legislative candidates. Last year, out of 100 State House races, only one independent was on the ballot. Ironically, the author of the bill is the only House member who faced an independent opponent.

For a full list of all decisions that have struck down requirements on the basis that they required too many signatures, see the April 1, 2016 print copy of Ballot Access News. Since that issue was published, there have been more such decisions, in Arkansas, Michigan, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

The original bill increased the petition requirement to 15% of the winner’s vote, and applied to all non-presidential candidates, not just legislative candidates.

Minnesota Senator Bonnie S. Westlin (D-Plymouth) has introduced SB 786. It would provide that no one could get on a primary ballot unless he or she got 30% of the vote at a pre-primary party endorsements meeting.

If this bill had been policy in the recent past, the Legal Marijuana Now Party would have had the ability to screen out insincere candidates who had filed in its primary. The party, which had been ballot-qualified with its own primary in 2020 and 2022, was plagued with individuals who filed to run in the party’s primary even though they didn’t care about legalizing marijuana. Instead, they were recruited by Republican activists, with the goal of injuring the Democratic Party’s chances in that particular race in which the LMN Party had a nominee. Anyone can get on a primary ballot in Minnesota simply by paying a filing fee. Minnesota doesn’t have registration by party, so any voter can run in any party primary, regardless of their beliefs or loyalties.

In 2023 the Democratic-majority legislature increased the vote test for qualified party status from 5% to 8%, to get rid of the Legal Marijuana Now Party. That bill originally took effect immediately, but when the legislature realized that it violates due process to make the definition of a party more stringent and make it effective immediately, the bill was amended to not apply to the 2024 election. But then, in 2024, the chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party sued the Secretary of State to remove the party immediately, on the grounds that it wasn’t structured according to the election code. The State Supreme Court then removed the party from the 2024 ballot, even though the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1989 that how a qualified party organizes itself is not the business of the state. That 1989 decision was Eu v San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee.

Indiana Representative Ryan Dvorak (D-South Bend) has again introduced his bill to greatly ease ballot access. He introduced the same bill in 2022 and 2024. It lowers the statewide petition for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, from 2% of the last vote for Secretary of State, to exactly 250 signatures. It also lowers the definition of a ballot-qualified party from one that polled 2% for Secretary of State at the last election, to a group that polled at least 2,500 votes for its candidate for Secretary of State.