The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, has this article about the history of alternative political parties in Wisconsin history. The Capital Times is a weekly print publication and also a daily on-line newspaper.
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For many years, Gallup Polls has been asking voters if they self-identify as a Democrat, Republican, or independent. The figures for the March 2023 poll show independents at 49%, Republicans at 25%, and Democrats at 25%. See here. That is the highest share choosing “independent” ever recorded by the poll.
On April 17, four organizations filed a single amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, in Libertarian Party of New York v New York State Board of Elections, 22-893. The amicus is on the side of the parties that filed the lawsuit. The lawsuit concerns the 2020 changes to New York ballot access laws. The changes tripled the number of signatures for statewide independents and the nominees of unqualified parties. They increased the distribution requirement. They did not relax the six-week petitioning period. Finally, the changes stiffened the definition of a qualified party from a group that polled 50,000 votes for Governor, to one that polled 2% for the office at the top of the ballot every two years (president in presidential years and governor in gubernatorial years).
The four organizations are the Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE), the Forward Party, Open Primaries, and the Rainey Center. Here is the brief. It is only 16 pages; I hope readers will read it. It makes the point that some of the most important third parties in U.S. history were one-state parties that had no desire to run a presidential nominee.
On April 17, the Montana House State Administration Committee defeated HB 565 by 10-8. However, there are procedures to ask for a re-vote, and there are also procedures for the entire House to take up the bill even though it had been defeated in Committee. HB 565 is the bill that increases petition requirements for new parties, independent candidates, and independent presidential candidates, and also raises the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot.
The other bill, SB 566, for top-two, was postponed until Wednesday, April 19.
The previous blog post said that the top-two bill had been amended from just affecting the U.S. Senate race in 2024, to include all the statewide offices. However the amendment would put the other statewide offices into the top-two system after 2024, not in 2024.
Both Montana bills that restrict ballot access have been amended. SB 566, which originally imposed a top-two system just for U.S. Senate in 2024, now applies to all statewide partisan offices except president. If the bill were enacted, there would be no means for a party to remain ballot-qualified unless it polled a large share of the vote for president. The percentage of the vote for president needed depends on what happens to the other bill, SB 565.
SB 565, the bill to raise petition requirements for minor parties, independent candidates, and independent presidential candidates, and to increase the vote test, has been amended so it is not quite so severe. The original bill raised all petitions to 5% of the number of registered voters, approximately 38,000. With the amendments, the party petition and the independent presidential petition rise from 5,000 signatures to 15,000 signatures. The petition for non-presidential independents rises from 5% of the vote cast for the winning candidate for that office to 5% of the total vote cast for that office.
Another amendment to SB 565 makes the vote test worse than the existing law, but not as bad as the original bill. The existing law requires a vote for a statewide office of 5% of the winning gubernatorial’s vote total. The original bill raised that to 5% of the number of registered voters. The amendment lowers that to 5% of the total vote cast in the last election. The amendment no longer removes the Libertarian Party from the ballot. In 2020 the Libertarian Party polled 31,267 votes for Auditor, and the new vote test under the amendment would be 30,604 votes.
The amendments retain more severe distribution requirements for the party petition. Existing law requires the lesser of 150 signatures, or 5% of the gubernatorial winner’s vote, in each of 34 state house districts. The amendments raise the 150 signature cap to 250. The amendments say the requirement within each state house district is the lesser of 250 or 5% of the total gubernatorial vote in that district. This amendment suffers from the same defect that caused the original distribution requirement to be declared unconstitutional last year in the Green Party’s winning case.
If SB 565 passes as amended, Montana would easily have the nation’s highest presidential petition requirement in the nation, when the states are compared using the easier method available for presidential candidates. All other states are at or below 2% of the last vote cast, for president, but Montana’s 15,000 would be 2.5% of the 2020 presidential vote. The bills would take effect January 1, 2024, so if the bills pass, the current easier law would be in effect for the remainder of this year.