The Arizona petition for a new, or previously unqualified political party, is so difficult, it has not been used since 2000. The law requires 20,449 signatures, due March 6, 2008.

The Green Party of Arizona is making every effort to meet this requirement. Greens from around the U.S. have contributed $8,000, so that the Arizona Greens have been able to hire paid circulators. To increase interest, several of the Green Party presidential candidates are in Arizona on the weekend of February 23-24. On Saturday, February 23, some will be at the famous Scottsdale Parada del Sol, the world’s largest horsedrawn parade, which culminates in a mass outdoor party called “Trail’s End.” On Sunday, February 24, at 1 pm, all of the declared Green presidential candidates will also attend a party meeting at the Mesa Public Library, Saguaro Room. Ironically, these presidential candidates cannot themselves help circulate the petition, since Arizona doesn’t permit out-of-state residents to do that.

The Green Party’s party petition must succeed, if the party’s presidential candidate is to appear on the November ballot. The party cannot use the independent candidate petition procedure because the deadline for that is June 4, and the party won’t have chosen its presidential candidate until July 13. Arizona does not permit stand-in presidential candidates on the independent petition. Vice-presidential substitution is a moot point, since Arizona does not print the names of vice-presidential candidates on its November ballot. Arizona has the nation’s 2nd earliest independent presidential petition; a Nader lawsuit (filed in 2004) against that independent deadline is pending in the 9th circuit.

The Libertarian Party is the only ballot-qualified party in Arizona currently, other than the two major parties. The Constitution Party has never been on the Arizona ballot as a party, and is not attempting to get on as a party this year.

The lawsuit filed in January by the Tennessee Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties has a procedural hearing in federal court on March 17. The case, called Libertarian Party of Tennessee v Thompson, challenges the procedures for new and previously unqualified parties to get on the ballot. No one has used those procedures since 1968. The hearing won’t get to the merits of the case, but will establish the ground rules to proceed.

Washington state’s ballot access improvement bill, HB 1534, passed the House on February 14. It has a hearing in the State Senate Elections Committee on February 22 (Friday) at 3:30 pm.

The bill does not make all the improvements that had previously been suggested. It still requires each nominee of an unqualified party to submit his or her own separate petition.

However, it improves current law: (1) it lowers the petition requirement for unqualified party candidates for US House, and for independent candidates for US House, from 1,000 signatures to 250 signatures; (2) it expands the petitioning period; (3) for qualified parties (those which are entitled to nominate by primary), the number of votes needed in the open primary for the person to be considered nominated is lowered from 1%, to 1,000 votes for statewide office, 250 votes for US House, and 100 votes for other partisan office. Although there shouldn’t be any minimum vote requirement, at least these minimums are much lower than the old requirement.