The California deadline to qualify a new political party is January 6, 2010. Although no official data will be released from California’s voter registration tally for several weeks, it is clear that no new party has qualified. None was making a serious attempt. Such an attempt would have required the group to have 88,991 registered members by today. The Reform Party is the only unqualified party that has even 20,000 registrants.
California’s deadline is the earliest in the nation. Although Maine’s full party procedure is even earlier, the Maine full party procedure is not the only way a new party can qualify in Maine. Such a group can also appear on the Maine ballot if it completes candidate petitions by late May 2010. Candidates chosen by the later procedure do have a party label on the ballot.
In 1976, a 3-judge U.S. District Court considered the question of whether California’s deadline to qualify a new party is unconstitutionally early. The panel upheld the deadline by a 2-1 vote. However, since then, federal or state courts in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota, have ruled that deadlines to qualify a new party that are in the first four months of an election year are unconstitutionally early. A case is pending in Tennessee.
Since 1976, no group has sued California over its early deadline to create a new party, because every substantial group that made a strong effort to qualify in California has succeeded, since then, despite the early deadline.