On June 11, the South Dakota Constitution Party filed a federal lawsuit against a South Dakota election law that requires members of small qualified parties to submit 250 signatures of party members in order to get on their own party’s primary ballot for statewide office. The case is called Constitution Party of South Dakota v Nelson, cv10-3011. The lawsuit also challenges the ban on out-of-state circulators. Here is the eleven-page complaint.
The Constitution Party is the only ballot-qualified party in South Dakota, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties. It became a qualified party in 2008, by submitting 8,389 valid signatures. Parties that qualify in presidential years in South Dakota are also automatically on in the following gubernatorial election year. The Constitution Party only has 345 registered voters in the state. The candidates seeking a place on this year’s primary ballot for statewide office made a strong effort, and did submit petitions bearing the signatures of over 100 party members by the March deadline, but those petitions were rejected, because the law requires 250 signatures of party members.
Statewide candidates of the Libertarian Party had had a similar problem in 2000 in South Dakota, when they also couldn’t get the signatures of 250 party members in order to get on the Libertarian primary ballot. They filed a federal lawsuit in 2000, and the case won, but it was won on statutory construction grounds, not constitutional grounds. The judge interpreted the law to mean that the Libertarians in 2000 didn’t really need 250 signatures of party members. However, in 2007, the South Dakota legislature amended the law, to make it clear that the 250-signature requirement does apply.
If the Constitution Party wins its new lawsuit, that will be a useful precedent that states must make the number of signatures needed for primary ballot access proportionate to the number of voters registered in that particular party, if the state insists that only registered party members may sign. The precedent might be useful against a somewhat similar requirement in Maine. The precedent would probably have less bearing on Massachusetts, another state that doesn’t make the number of signatures proportionate to the size of the party, because Massachusetts lets independent voters sign primary petitions, and over half of Massachusetts registered voters are independents.