On January 26, six Arizona legislators introduced HB 2304, which makes substantial improvements in ballot access, along with many other unrelated election law changes. The bill says that when a party qualifies, it is entitled to be on the ballot for the next two elections. If this part of the bill is signed into law, the Green Party will be on the ballot automatically in 2012, because it successfully petitioned in 2010 and appeared on the ballot in 2010.

The bill also reduces the number of signatures needed for a candidate to get on the primary ballot of a newly-qualified party. Current law makes it difficult for a candidate to get on the primary ballot of a new party; the current requirement is one-tenth of 1% of the total vote cast for that office in the last general election. In 2010, this meant that anyone trying to get on the Green Party’s primary ballot for statewide office needed 2,294 signatures, which is difficult when a party only has approximately 4,500 registered members (however, registered independents could sign this type of petition). Under current law, primary ballot access is not a problem when the party is not a new party. Candidates trying to get on the primary ballot of an old party only need signatures of one-half of 1% of the number of registered members of that party. The bill would apply that formula to new parties as well. If this bill had been in effect in 2010, a candidate would only have needed about 25 signatures to get on the Green Party primary ballot for statewide office.

Finally, the bill makes it legal for an out-of-state resident to circulate any type of petition in Arizona. Current law only lets out-of-state circulators work on an independent presidential candidate’s petition. The bill requires that out-of-state circulators must register with the Secretary of State before working.

New York Assemblymember J. Gary Pretlow (D-Mount Vernon) has re-introduced his bill to define a political party as a group that received at least 100,000 votes for Governor. The current law says a party is a group that polled at least 50,000 votes for Governor. Assemblymember Pretlow introduced the same bill in 2009, and it made no headway.

The bill seems very hostile toward the Green Party, which is the only New York qualified party that polled fewer than 100,000 votes for Governor last year. If the bill passed this year, the Green Party, and all qualified parties, would first need to pass the 100,000 hurdle in November 2014.

On February 3, a Vermont Superior Court Judge held oral arguments in Trudell v Markowitz, 612-8-10-wn-cv. This is the lawsuit filed last year, challenging the constitutionality of the June petition deadline for independent candidates. The 2010 legislature moved that deadline from September to June. The 2010 legislature also moved the primary from September to August. If the legislature had simply moved the petition deadline from September to August, it is not likely anyone would have sued. But setting the independent candidate petition deadline months before the primary is unconstitutional, according to precedents from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina.

The judge denied the state’s attempt to dismiss the case, and said he would make a decision on the constitutionality of the law in the next few months.