Activists have located state legislators in three state recently, who will introduce bills to improve ballot access laws. In Maryland, a sponsor has been found who will introduce a bill to clarify that signatures on petitions need not be an exact match of the voter’s name as recorded on voter registration records.

In Michigan, a sponsor has been found for a bill that will let a ballot-qualified party change its name, so that the new name matches the name of the national party that the state party is affiliated with. This bill is especially needed by the Constitution Party. The Constitution Party changed its name at its national convention ten years ago, but in Michigan, the party is still being forced to keep its old name, the U.S. Taxpayers Party.

In Missouri, a sponsor has been found for a bill to fix the drafting error in the 1993 ballot access improvement bill. One of the purposes of the 1993 reform, which did pass and get signed into law, was to make it possible for unqualified parties to circulate a petition to qualify the party before that group had chosen its nominees. But due to a drafting error, the law still requires such a petition to list the name of the presidential elector candidates, and a presidential candidate, even though the law doesn’t force the group to list its other nominees.

In 2006, South Dakota had an initiative on the ballot to ban virtually all abortions. An anonymous donor had contributed $750,000 to get the initiative on the ballot and to carry on the campaign for it. The measure lost, 46% to 54%. Also in 2006, the South Dakota Secretary of State had sued the campaign committee set up to promote the initiative to learn the identity of the committee’s donor.

Technically, the anonymous donor had contributed $750,000 to a corporation, Promising Future, Inc. The anonymous donor owned all the shares of the corporation, but he or she was not the agent of the corporation. The corporation, in turn, had contributed $750,000 to the ballot question committee “South Dakotans for 1215/Vote Yes For Life”. South Dakotans for 1215/Vote Yes For Life had then filed campaign reports saying it received its money from Promising Future. However, the Secretary of State felt that the intent of the law was to force the initiative proponents to reveal the identity of the anonymous person who had set up Promising Future. But, on August 10, 2007, the Circuit Court in Minnehaha County had ruled that the law didn’t require that kind of disclosure. The Secretary of State had appealed. On December 30, 2008, the Supreme Court had ruled unanimously that the lower court had mischaracterized the law, and had remanded the case back to the lower court for a new decision.

However, on November 6, 2009, the lower court had ruled that because the State Supreme Court’s characterization of the campaign finance laws was a new interpretation, one that could not have been known by the anonymous donor at the time of the anonymous donation, it would be unconstitutional to apply the new understanding of the campaign finance laws retroactively. On November 25, 2009, the State said it would not appeal the case again. In the meantime, the legislature has changed the law to make it clear that if this situation occurs in the future, the campaign laws clearly require anyone in the shoes of the anonymous donor to be revealed. The case has been called Secretary of State Chris Nelson v Promising Future, Inc., no. 2008 SD 130 in the State Supreme Court, and CIV 06-4319 in the lower court.

In the United States, it seems there is almost an infinity of reasons why petitions can be challenged. States that require petition sheets to be notarized open the doors for additional types of challenges. Determined challengers may realize that the petition itself has enough signatures of registered voters, so then the challengers try to find something wrong with the paperwork involving notarization.

A group in Maine recently submitted 56,107 valid signatures, to force a referendum on a tax overhaul that the legislature passed earlier this year. Opponents of the referendum petition say that it should not be on the ballot, because at least two of the notaries public who notarized certain sheets got married, and didn’t ever notify the state office that keeps tabs on notaries that their surnames had changed. Because the Secretary of State certified the petition anyway, one challenger sued the Secretary of State to remove the referendum. The lawsuit is Johnson v Dunlap, Kennebec Superior Court, AP 09-56. The case will probably be decided by January 1, 2010.