North Dakota is the only state in which there are no candidates on the November 2012 ballot for state legislature, other than the Democratic and Republican Party nominees.

Even though there are four qualified parties on the ballot in North Dakota, qualified parties in that state cannot run legislative candidates unless approximately 10% to 15% of all the primary voters choose to vote in that party’s primary. North Dakota has open primaries, so a voter is free to vote in any party’s primary, but the idea that such a large share of voters would ever choose a minor primary ballot is unrealistic. In no state with open primaries in the last forty years is there any instance in any state when more than 6% of the state’s primary voters chose a minor party primary ballot.

North Dakota also has very stringent petition requirements for independent candidates for the legislature. They need a petition signed by 2% of the population of the district, including children and aliens. The typical state legislative district in North Dakota only has 6,700 voters in a presidential general election, and in the typical district an independent for the legislature needs 250 signatures. If a minor party nominee does decide to qualify using the independent procedure, he or she is not permitted to have a ballot label other than “independent.”

Even Georgia this year has one independent on the ballot for state legislature. He is Rusty Kidd. He is an incumbent running for re-election, and under a unique Georgia law, independent candidates don’t need a petition if they were elected as an independent in the last regularly-scheduled election.

On June 20, this blog posted the sad news that New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner planned to place all the Libertarian Party nominees in a party column called “Other candidates”, even though the party was circulating the petition for party status. This decision seemed a betrayal, because in 2008, the Deputy Secretary of State had said in a court affidavit that groups that successfully circulate the party petition do get their own party column on the ballot.

However, actually, the Secretary of State has arranged that the party column headings for November 2012 ballots will be “Libertarian and Other Candidates”; “Republican candidates”; and “Democratic candidates.” Of course, there is a fourth column for write-ins called “Write-in candidates”, which contains blank lines. Use this link to see a ballot. The link requires you to choose a town, so just choose any town at random. Wait a few seconds after choosing a town, and then scroll down below the list of towns to see the ballot for that town.

The format is still not ideal, because Virgil Goode, the Constitution Party presidential nominee, is within the “Libertarian and Other Candidates” column, with the word “Constitution” printed next to his name in small letters. Every other state that uses party column ballots, except New Jersey, would give the Constitution Party its own party column, even if that party only had a nominee for one office. The party column ballot-format does waste space, and it would be much better ballot design for New Hampshire, and all states, to abandon the party-column format and use an office-group format. Thanks to Seth Cohn for the link.

Forbes has this op-ed by Doug Bandow, criticizing the Republican Party for trying to limit voter choices in this year’s election. Bandow is an author and television commentator.

Slate has a somewhat similar article here, by David Weigel.