Texas has a unique law which requires parties that intend to qualify by petition to notify the state that they intend to do that. The intention form is due January 2, 2012. Here is a link to the form.

The requirement discriminates against parties that are formed in the spring of election years, because by then it is too late to complete the form. If Texas had had a law like this in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt could not have put his new Progressive Party on the ballot, because even the idea for the party did not occur to Roosevelt until after Roosevelt failed to get the Republican presidential nomination in June 1912. Similarly, Strom Thurmond and his States Rights Party did get on the ballot in Texas in 1948, because Texas did not have this law back then. Thurmond’s party was not created until July 1948.

The law was passed in 1993 and has never been challenged in court. There is no election administration-related need for the form, because a party can’t begin to petition until after the primary anyway. in 2012 a party can’t begin to petition until April. If a new party were formed in the spring of 2012 that had not existed as of January 2, 2012, it would seem to be in a position to challenge the law, especially as applied to a presidential election.

The last time that a new party was formed in the United States in the election year itself, and which proved to have a fairly strong ability to get on ballots, was the Natural Law Party. It was formed in April 1992. Of course, the Texas law didn’t exist that year. Since the formation of the Natural Law Party in 1992, all the new parties formed in the U.S., and which had any heft, have been formed in the odd years before the election.

Americans Elect has eased several rules on how candidates may seek the group’s presidential nomination. The original rules said that “automatic” candidates need 10,000 clicks, and “contingent” candidates need 100,000 clicks. “Clicks” means a computer response from a delegate, sitting at home in front of his or her computer. In effect, a “click” is a vote. The original rules said all these clicks must come in during a one-month period.

The new, more relaxed rules say that the clicks may come in at any time, from the moment the candidate declares for the nomination, through April 3. The new rules also lower the “contingent” candidate requirement from 100,000 to 50,000.

As before, “automatic” means someone who has the objective characteristics of past Presidents…a past or present member of Congress, or a past or present Governor, or a past or present cabinet member, or past high-ranking general, or CEO of a very large business, or national leader of a major labor union.

Americans Elect also relaxed the rules on how the delegates may override any rules-related decision of the Americans Elect board. The old rules required 2/3rds of the delegates to vote to overrule the Board. The new rules require a majority vote, and expand the time period during which the delegates may participate in an override vote.

Americans Elect held a press conference on December 21 to announce the new rules. During the question-and-answer period, Americans Elect leaders engaged in a vigorous debate with some reporters who have criticized Americans Elect because not all donors to Americans Elect are publicly identified.

Last month, the Country Party submitted 6,387 signatures on its Wyoming ballot access petition. The requirement is 3,740 signatures. Even though the Country Party submitted 70% more signatures than the requirement, the state now says that the petition only contains 3,190 valid signatures. This means that the state believes that only 50% of the signatures submitted are valid.

The party is free to get more signatures. The deadline is June 1, 2012. The reason the validity rate is so low is that Wyoming election officials maintain that people who did not vote in 2010 are not eligible to sign petitions. They are legally classed as “inactive” voters, even if they voted in 2008. The federal Motor Voter law of 1993 makes it illegal for states to classify voters as “inactive” unless they skip two even-year general elections in a row. But, that federal law deosn’t apply to states that have election-day registration, and Wyoming has election-day registration.

Wyoming does not permit people to register to vote between elections unless they appear physically at the office of a county or state election official. Therefore, a substantial share of Wyoming adult citizens are not registered to vote in the period between elections. This, of course, makes it very difficult for petitions to have a normal validity rate. In some states, if an “inactive voter” signs a petition, and the signature and address matches the voter registration record, then that voter is automatically moved onto the “active voter” list. The whole purpose of the “inactive voter” concept is that the government is afraid that person no longer is registered at the current address. But an otherwise valid signature on a petition is evidence that that voter does still live at the same address, and logically that person should not only be allowed to sign the petition, but to be reclassified as an active voter. The restrictive Wyoming policy on signature validity is not logical.

In 1970 the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed a decision of a lower 3-judge court in New York that said it is unconstitutional for a state to say that people can’t sign petitions if they hadn’t voted in the last election, even if they had registered to vote since the last election. That case was Socialist Workers Party v Rockefeller, 400 US 806. The logic of that decision implies that the Wyoming policy might be unconstitutional, especially in the context of how difficult it is for voters to re-register between elections.