LOUISIANA CHANGES CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION SYSTEM; NEW LAW BARS MINOR PARTY CANDIDATES
On January 22, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed HB 17, a bill that had been introduced only one week earlier. The purpose of the bill was to transform Louisiana’s election system from a system in which parties don’t have nominees (except for President) into a state in which parties do have nominees for all public office. The bill was amended to apply only to elections for Congress and a few state offices, and then passed.
Unfortunately, the bill made a drafting error and now it is impossible for qualified minor parties to have candidates for either house of Congress. The law continues to say that a qualified party is any group with 1,000 registrants. The new law says that the only qualified parties that may have primaries are those parties that got 5% for a statewide office in either the last state election or the last presidential election. None of the three minor qualified parties (Libertarian, Green, or Independent) got 5% in a recent statewide election.
The new law has no mechanism for those three parties to nominate candidates for either house of Congress, nor for the other offices that will now have party nominees: State Supreme Court, State Education Board, and Public Service Commission. In theory, the new law could have provided that they nominate by convention, which would have been a sensible solution. But instead there is no mechanism.