On April 3, the California Secretary of State notified the county elections officials that No Labels is about to conduct a registration drive so as to become a qualified party. It will need about 75,000 registered members. The exact requirement can’t be known because the law required .33% of the registered voters as of the time it qualifies, and of course the number of registered voters in the state is constantly changing.
On March 30, the Maine Joint Veterans & Legal Affairs Committee postponed LD 769 until next year. It changes the definition of a qualified party. Current law says it is a group that has 5,000 registered members, but after four years on the ballot, it must have 10,000. The bill would have deleted the reference to 10,000.
Current law is nonsensical. If a group goes off the ballot because it has fewer than 10,000 registered members, the state must let it keep its registered members, per a court decision last year. And a newly-disqualified party could immediately re-qualify as a new party with its 5,000 registrants.
On March 28, Arizona HCR 2033 passed the Senate, so it is now through the legislature. The vote was 16-13. Here is the text. It is a proposed constitutional amendment. The voters will vote on it in November 2024. It would provide that ballot-qualified parties have the right to place a nominee on the general election ballot.
On March 30, Arkansas SB 277 passed the State Senate. It had passed the House on March 27. It eases procedures for newly-qualifying parties. The number of signatures drops from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote (about 27,000 signatures) to exactly 10,000 signatures. The petition can now circulate starting on January 1 of any odd year. It is due three weeks before the primary, which is in May in midterm years and March in presidential years. That expands the petitioning period to sixteen months in midterm years, and fourteen months in presidential years. Formerly the petition had to be completed in 90 days, and the group chose its own 90-day period. Formerly the filing deadline was four months before the primary.
Also the newly-qualifying party need not submit the names of its nominees until primary day (the names of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees are due much later, in September of the election year).
Only four legislators voted against the bill: Senator Jim Dotson (R-Bentonville), Senator Fredrick Love (D-Mabelvale), Representative Mark Berry (R-Ozark), Representative Josh Miller (R-Heber Springs).
Alice Kelsey died on February 5, 2023, at the age of 89. She had been Treasurer of the Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE) from the early 1990’s, until about five years ago. She had lived in New York state while she was Treasurer, but had moved to North Carolina afterwards.
COFOE has existed since 1985 and is a loose coalition of most of the nation’s nationally-organized minor parties, along with some other organizations that care about ballot access.
