The February 20 issue of the Columbus Dispatch has this story about the Libertarian Party’s 2010 campaign in Ohio. This is the first year that the Libertarian Party has been on the ballot in a mid-term year in Ohio, as a party, since 1982.

The story does not mention the other ballot-qualified minor parties in Ohio this year, which are Constitution, Green, and Socialist. Ohio has never before had six ballot-qualified parties with their own primary. The highest number of parties with their own primary in the past has been four.

Three Rhode Island Democratic Senators have introduced SB 2150. It requires political parties to let independent voters vote in their primaries. The authors are Leonidas Raptakis, Marc Cote, and Michael Pinga. Some leaders of the Republican Party have been thinking about excluding independents from the Republican primary. The existing law is vague about whether parties can exclude independents.

On February 18, four Georgia Representatives introduced HB 1257. It abolishes mandatory ballot access petitions for independent candidates, and for the nominees of unqualified parties. Georgia has always required independent and minor party candidates to pay the same large filing fees that Democrats and Republicans pay to run in primaries. So, this bill, if enacted, would not be impractical. The filing fees would still keep the ballot uncrowded.

The sponsors are: Alan Powell (D-Hartwell), E. Culver “Rusty” Kidd (Independent-Milledgeville), Mark Hatfield (R-Waycross), and Tom McCall (R-Elberton).

One possible problem with the bill relates to independent presidential candidates. Georgia has no filing fee for presidential candidates, so the bill, as written, would permit any independent presidential candidate to get on the November ballot with neither a petition nor a filing fee.

It is entirely fitting that this bill should be co-authored by Representative Kidd. His father, Culver Kidd, was a State Senator for 50 years, and he was the author of the last ballot access reform bill in Georgia, which passed in 1986. That 1986 bill lowered the statewide petitions to 1% of the number of registered voters. That is still a very difficult hurdle, but it is better than the law which existed before 1986.

The younger Kidd was elected to the Georgia House on December 1, 2009, in a special election, as an independent candidate.

The other two pending ballot access bills are SB 359 and HB 1141. Thanks to Jason Pye for this news.