On January 10, a U.S. District Court held oral arguments in Green Party of Tennessee et al v Goins, a lawsuit in which the Green and Constitution Parties challenge the Tennessee ballot access law for new and previously unqualified parties. The law requires slightly more than 40,000 signatures, due April 5. UPDATE: here is a news story about the hearing.

The hearing seemed to go well for the minor parties. The judge seemed unpersuaded that Tennessee has an interest in requiring so many signatures for minor parties, when the state only requires 25 signatures for independent candidates (and 275 signatures for independent presidential candidates). Also he seemed troubled by the early deadline.

Leaders of the California legislature are likely to introduce, and support, a bill to ease the definition of “political party”, to compensate for Proposition 14’s practical elimination of the vote test for a party to remain ballot-qualified. The bill will probably be introduced in the next few weeks. It may change the registration membership test from 1% of the last gubernatorial vote, to one-third of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote. It would not take effect this year. That would reduce the registration test from approximately 103,000 members, to approximately 36,000.

The Virginia legislature still hasn’t drawn new U.S. House district boundaries, even though state law says that this job must be done by January 1 of any election year following a new census. Virginia law regarding petitions for the presidential candidates of unqualified parties, and independent presidential candidates, says that these petitions must carry the names of presidential elector candidates. Furthermore, candidates for presidential elector have a residency requirement; the petition must list one elector candidate from each district, plus the two at-large electors.

Because no Virginia resident can know which district he or she will be living in, until after the new districts are drawn, it is impossible for a group, or an independent presidential candidate, to state to circulate the petition. The law says these petitions may start to circulate on January 1 of the presidential election year, but in practice, in 2012 so far, they cannot circulate yet. Virginia does permit stand-in presidential candidates, so if it weren’t for the presidential elector residency problem, any unqualified parties could be circulating petitions for president now. The only qualified parties in Virginia since 1997 have been the Democratic and Republican Parties.

The Virginia election code seems to discriminate against unqualified parties and independent presidential candidates, relative to qualified parties. The law seems to have no requirement that the presidential elector candidates nominated by the qualified parties need live in any particular district. Thanks to Bill Redpath for this news.

The redistricting delay also subtracts from the available petitioning period for candidates for U.S. House. Although a candidate for U.S. House need not live in the district, the circulators must live in the district. The district residency requirement is being litigated.