On June 17, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed AB 81, one of the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bills. Among other things, it moves the petition deadline for new parties from May to April. In 1986 a U.S. District Court in Nevada declared that state’s former April petition deadline for new party petitions to be unconstitutional.
The bill also deletes the easy method for new parties to get on the ballot. The old Nevada law gave unqualified parties a choice: they could either submit a petition of 1% of the last vote (7,013 signatures), to become ballot-qualified; or they could submit candidate petitions, which only required 250 signatures for statewide office and 100 for U.S. House and other district and county office. Party labels were permitted for both methods. However, the latter procedure is now repealed. The latter procedure never did apply to presidential candidates, but it did apply to all other partisan office.