On July 5, the Kansas Secretary of State determined that Americans Elect has enough valid signatures on its petition for party status. This is the first newly-qualifying party in Kansas since 1998. The only other ballot-qualified parties in Kansas are the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian and Reform Parties.

Americans Elect is the first party on the ballot in Kansas since 1896 that has more than one word in its name. In 1897 the Kansas legislature had passed a law saying a party could have only one word in its name, other than the word “Party.” The legislature did this because in 1896 the Democratic and Peoples Party had circumvented the state’s ban on fusion by running a single ticket under the party name ”Democratic Peoples Party.”

In 2000, the Natural Law Party won a lawsuit against the one-word restriction. This is an example of how new parties, like Americans Elect, have benefited from past activism of older minor parties.

On July 4, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed SB 1586. It includes many election law changes. It reduces the number of signatures needed for local referendum petitions, from 10% of the number of registered voters, to 8% of the last gubernatorial vote.

It also says that for statewide referendum petitions, the signatures need not be segregated by jurisdiction. The Help America Vote Act passed by Congress in 2002 requires all states to have a centralized data base of that state’s registered voters. Apparently the Illinois legislature believes that, therefore, there is no longer any need to require that a single petition sheet for a referendum contain only signatures from a single county. No such change was made for statewide candidate petitions, however.

The July 3 Salt Lake Tribune has this story, which mentions that Utah State Representative John Dougall says he favors requiring parties to pay for their own nomination process. Dougall has been in the legislature since 2002 and is a Republican from American Fork. Thanks to Election Updates for the link.