Arkansas HB 1246, which expands the petitioning period for new parties from any 60 days of the group’s choice to any 90 days, passed the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee on February 12. It had already passed the House.

The other Arkansas ballot access bill has been delayed somewhat because it needed to be redrafted. It changes the defininition of “party” from a group that got 3% for the office at the top of the ticket (President or Governor, depending on which election) to a group that got 3% for any statewide race at either of the last two elections.

Bills have been introduced in both houses of the Tennessee legislature to establish registration by party. They are SB 544 by Senator Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) and HB 629 by Representative Debra Maggart. They would take effect July 1, 2009.

The bills provide that for already-registered voters, the first primary at which such a voter participates it would determine how that voter is registered. If the voter chooses a Democratic ballot, his or her voter registration record would then list that voter as a Democrat. For new voters, the new voter registration form would include a blank line asking for that voter’s party. Here is the text of the bill.

The bill authors seem uninformed about case law concerning voter registration by party. The bills assert that no one may vote in a primary without having joined a party. But in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut, the question of whether independent voters may vote in a partisan primary is a decision for the political party, not the state. Also the bills do not deal with registration into a party that is not a qualified party. Courts in Colorado, Oklahoma, New Jersey, New York, and Iowa have ruled that voters must be allowed to register into unqualified parties.