The Alaska Libertarian Party is ballot-qualified, but it will lose its spot on the ballot in the spring of 2010 unless it increases its registration to 9,786 members. According to the Alaska Libertarian Party activist who has been conducting the party’s registration drive, the party will have that many registered voters by January 1, 2010.

In 2004, the Alaska legislature passed an inane bill that requires a party to have many more registrations to be on the ballot in mid-term years, than in presidential years. Before the 2004 bill passed, parties that hadn’t met the 3% vote test needed to have registration membership equal to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. The 2004 bill changed this, so a party using the registration test must have registration of 3% of the last vote cast. Because voter turnout in Alaska, as in all states, is much higher in presidential election years than in mid-term years, the 2004 law had the effect of requiring far more registrations in mid-term years than in presidential years.

For example, the registration test in Alaska in 2006 was 9,258 registrants. Then, in 2008, it dropped to 7,124 registrants. But for 2010, it is 9,786.

In 2006, the only other time the Alaska Libertarian Party had to do a registration drive to comply with the 2004 law, the drive didn’t get completed until April 2006.

Alaska Representative Max Gruenberg has indicated he will introduce a bill in 2010 to change the registration test to a flat number of registrants, similar to laws in Colorado and Louisiana. Both of those states require exactly 1,000 registrants.

Thomas Simmons of Winchester, New Hampshire, says he is mulling over becoming the Libertarian Party’s candidate for Governor of New Hampshire in 2010. See here for his statement and information about him. Thanks to NolanChart blog for the link.

In 1996, the League of United Latin American Citizens had sued Boerne, Texas, to force the city to use Cumulative Voting to elect its 5-member city council. Hispanic residents of Boerne had never been able to elect one of their own to the city council under the at-large system. The lawsuit was successful, and starting in 1997, Boerne used Cumulative Voting. Cumulative Voting gives each voter multiple votes (sometimes two, sometimes three). Each voter is permitted to use all of his or her votes to help just one candidate, or, alternatively, the voter can spread the votes around to several candidates.

Cumulative voting appeared to end in Boerne earlier this month. The League, dissatisfied with the cumulative voting experience, had persuaded the city council to stop using that system, and instead to establish single-member districts. The federal judge who had jurisdiction of the 1996 case also approved the change. However, now a group that doesn’t like single-member districts is threatening to sue the city, because the city charter establishes at-large districts and the city charter can only be changed by the voters. See this story.