On March 14, a U.S. District Court Judge in Arizona set an expedited briefing schedule in Arizona Green Party v Bennett, 2:14cv-375. This is the case that challenges the February petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties. Each party will submit its chief brief by April 11, and any responses to those briefs are due April 24.
On March 17, the Arizona Secretary of State released a new voter registration tally, as of March 1: Republican 1,130,170; Democratic 960,701; Libertarian 26,595; Americans Elect 332; independents and others 1,134,243. The state no longer tallies the number of Greens separately, but the last time the state did a separate Green tally, in November 2013, there were 5,601 Greens. If the Green Party gets on the 2014 ballot, the state will resume its Green Party tally.
The January 1, 2014 figures were: Republican 1,131,263; Democratic 962,828; Libertarian 26,387; Americans Elect 317; independents and others, 1,123,998.
Some news stories have reported that for the first time, there are more independents than Republicans, but when one considers that the state doesn’t separate out the independents from the members of unqualified parties, especially the Greens, that is not true yet, although the trend shows it soon will be true.
On March 17, attorneys for Alabama filed this 70-page brief with the Eleventh Circuit in Stein v Secretary of State of Alabama, 13-15556. The brief discusses the state interest in the March deadline starting on page 58. The state says it wouldn’t be fair to the two major parties if newly-qualifying parties could file their petitions after the March primary. Also the state says that the number of signatures is so large, that if the state had a later deadline, it would have trouble verifying all the signatures.
The obvious response is that if the state didn’t require 44,829 valid signatures, the burden on the state from checking the signatures would not be great. Alabama lets independent presidential candidates on the ballot if they file a petition by late summer, containing 5,000 signatures. In 2012, only three such petitions were received, from Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Virgil Goode. It is logical to assume, then, that if the state only required 5,000 signtures for newly-qualifying parties, only the three parties that successfully petitioned for their presidential candidates would have submitted statewide petitions. So the state would not have needed to check any independent presidential petitions, and the burden of checking three party petitions would have been no greater than the burden the state actually experienced.
According to this story, the Judge in the Ohio Libertarian Party primary ballot access case said on March 17 that he will probably have the decision out by the end of this week.
On March 14, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Haynes, Jr., put the Green Party and the Constitution Party on the 2014 ballot in Tennessee. The case is Green Party of Tennessee v Hargett, middle district, 3:13cv-1128. Here is the 28-page decision.
The same judge had put the parties on the ballot in 2012. The two parties did not meet the 5% vote test, which, in presidential years, applies only to President. The main basis for the ruling is Equal Protection. Parties that did meet the 5% vote test are safely on the ballot for the next two elections, yet under the statute, as amended a few years ago, parties that successfully submit a petition of 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote are only on the ballot for one election.
An alternate basis for the decision is that, because the 2.5% petition was held unconstitutional in 2012 and again in 2013, and has not yet been amended, even if the parties aren’t entitled to two elections on the Equal Protection claim, they should still be on the ballot because the petition requirement is void and the law hasn’t been amended yet. The state is appealing to the Sixth Circuit, but the case isn’t being expedited and no hearing date has been set.
The decision also strikes down the law that says newly-qualifying parties must sign a loyalty oath that they do not advocate the violent overthrow of the government. The U.S. Supreme Court had unanimously invalidated a similar Indiana law in 1974. The state’s defense had been that the state doesn’t enforce the loyalty oath.
The legislature is currently considering several ballot access bills and it is possible the legislature can pass a bill that addresses this issue and moots any more court proceedings.
