On May 30, the Massachusetts Joint Election Law Committee will hear HB646 and SB446. Those bills provide for election-day registration. Eight states already have election-day registration: Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Also, North Dakota in effect has election-day registration, since it doesn’t have voter registration at all.
The Delaware House Administration Committee will soon hear HB 177, which would ban fusion. The bill has 10 co-sponsors, including legislative leaders from both major parties. The Delaware legislature sits until June 30. Two ballot-qualified parties in Delaware, the Working Families Party and the Independent Party, are fighting the bill.
The Georgia Green Party launched its statewide petition drive in Athens, Georgia, on May 5, and collected 500 signatures the first day. The party needs 44,089 valid signatures by July 8, 2008.
No Green Party candidate has ever appeared on the Georgia ballot for a federal or state office, with the party label. The statewide petition is 1% of the number of registered voters, and all district and county petitions are 5% of the number of registered voters in that district or county. The only other states in which the word “Green Party” have never appeared on the ballot for a state or federal office are Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming.
The South Carolina Republican Party administers its own presidential primary with no help from state or local elections officials. Therefore, the party is free to set the date whenever it wants. The state chairman of the party has hinted to the press that the state party will move the primary so that it is earlier than January 29. The South Carolina Republican Party’s goal is to have the 2nd earliest state presidential primary in the nation (after New Hampshire). Since Florida’s presidential primary will be on January 29, that will probably propel an earlier South Carolina Republican primary. Under national Republican Party rules, the state party has until September 4, 2007 to settle on the primary date.
The Tennessee Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties are likely to file a federal lawsuit in June 2007, challenging that state’s procedures for getting a party on the ballot. Tennessee’s petition is so difficult, no group has used it since 1968. It requires a petition signed by 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote. The wording says the signers are members. The deadline is not set forth in the law, but election administrators say it is approximately four months before the primary. Groups that have tried to complete this petition, and failed, include the Constitution Party, the Reform Party, the Populist Party of the 1980’s, and the Green Party.
The only states which have had no qualified parties on the ballot (other than the Democratic and Republican Parties) in the last 30 years are Tennessee and New Jersey. Also, Georgia has had no third parties on the ballot who were qualified for district office in over 30 years, but several on the ballot who were qualified for statewide office, including the Libertarian Party continuously since 1988.
