On December 15, Americans Elect physically filed approximately 32,000 signatures with the Maine Secretary of State. These signatures have already been verified by various town clerks. The law requires 28,639 valid signatures, so the petition has enough valid signatures.
Maine’s petition requirement for newly qualifying parties is among the most difficult in the nation. The only registered voters who are eligible to sign are voters registered independent, plus the tiny number of votes who have already registered into the Americans Elect Party. This petition procedure has existed since 1976, and the only other group that ever successfully used it was the Reform Party in 1995.
Generally, groups become qualified parties in Maine, not with the petition, but by placing a presidential or a gubernatorial candidate on the ballot, with the party label, and hoping that candidate polls at least 5%. Groups that have used the independent petition/5% method to obtain qualified party status in Maine in the last forty years include the Libertarian Party 1992-1994, and the Green Party, which has been ballot-qualified for over ten years.
Americans Elect is still required to hold at least one town caucus meeting in March 2012, in at least 14 of the state’s 16 counties. Then it will be entitled to its own primary, and anyone can run for any partisan office in the party’s primary. However, it will be very difficult for anyone to get on the party’s primary ballot unless a substantial number of voters register as members of the party.