Delaware is the only state in which the sole determinant of whether a party is ballot-qualified is how many registered voters it has. Delaware created this system in 1978, and said any party with registration membership of one-twentieth of 1% is ballot-qualified. Vote returns are irrelevant.

Early this year, Delaware changed the requirement from one-twentieth of 1% to one-tenth of 1%, and made it effective immediately. Now the Commissioner of Elections, cognizant that it is not easy for a qualified minor party to double in size in a matter of months, has asked the legislature to pass a bill, effective immediately, to postpone the new tougher requirement until 2011. Generally the Delaware legislature follows the recommendations of the Elections Commissioner, on election law matters.

Delaware has severe restrictions on the ability of voters to change parties during an election year. The restrictions on voters changing parties are more severe than any other state except New York.

Among the parties that want to participate in this year’s election, the Constitution Party is most severely disadvantaged by the new requirement, because it is smaller than the other active minor parties.

Oklahoma Representative Chris Benge (R-Tulsa), speaker of the House, has recently said that he supports HB 1072, the ballot access reform bill. This development makes it fairly likely that the bill will pass before the legislature adjourns at the end of May.

The bill passed both houses of the legislature last year, but the two versions differ. The bill has been in a conference committee ever since. The final version of the bill is yet to be determined, but there is some reason to believe it will require 10,000 valid signatures for a new party, which is far better than the existing requirement of 73,134 valid signatures.

Veteran California Democratic campaign professionals Steven Maviglio and Mike Roth have begun working against California’s Proposition 14, the June 2010 ballot measure to set up a top-two election system in California. Maviglio is the editor of the blog California Majority Report. Roth was Communications Director for John Garamendi when Garamendi was California’s Lieutenant Governor. They are both based in Sacramento. They have set up a committee to raise money to defeat Proposition 14, and have a web page, www.noonproposition14.com. At this point it doesn’t have a great deal of content.