On March 23, the Maine Joint Standing Committee on State and Local Government held a hearing on LD 545. This is the bill to ease the number of signatures for a member of a small qualified party to get on that party’s primary ballot. Current Maine law requires 2,000 signatures of party members, for a statewide candidate, regardless of how many registered voters that party has. The bill would amend the law to require the smaller of 2,000 signatures, or 2% of the number of people registered in that party.

The Green Party presented several witnesses who described the extreme difficulty of getting the signatures of 2,000 party members, in a limited time, for a party that has 37,000 registered voters. The committee seemed receptive to the bill and will soon hold a work session to finalize the bill.

Canada will almost certainly hold a national parliamentary election on May 2. See this story. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.

The Kentucky Libertarian Party has never been on the ballot for a statewide office, except in presidential years. Kentucky elects its state statewide officers in the odd years just before presidential election years. This year, the party plans to collect 5,000 signatures to run for at least one of the statewide races. Ken Moellman will run for State Treasurer. See this story. The party may nominate other statewide candidates.

The Secretary of State says that the party must submit a separate petition for each of its statewide nominees. However, in 2008, a different Secretary of State permitted the Libertarians to list both a presidential candidate and a U.S. Senate candidate on the same petition. The current Secretary of State says the difference is that in 2008, both offices were federal offices, which is a meaningless distinction. In 1971, the Kentucky Secretary of State allowed the American Party to list a full slate of statewide nominees on a single petition. That 1971 petition listed American Party nominees for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Auditor, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Agriculture Commissioner, and Clerk of the Supreme Court.