The Alaska Libertarian Party is ballot-qualified, but it will lose its spot on the ballot in the spring of 2010 unless it increases its registration to 9,786 members. According to the Alaska Libertarian Party activist who has been conducting the party’s registration drive, the party will have that many registered voters by January 1, 2010.
In 2004, the Alaska legislature passed an inane bill that requires a party to have many more registrations to be on the ballot in mid-term years, than in presidential years. Before the 2004 bill passed, parties that hadn’t met the 3% vote test needed to have registration membership equal to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. The 2004 bill changed this, so a party using the registration test must have registration of 3% of the last vote cast. Because voter turnout in Alaska, as in all states, is much higher in presidential election years than in mid-term years, the 2004 law had the effect of requiring far more registrations in mid-term years than in presidential years.
For example, the registration test in Alaska in 2006 was 9,258 registrants. Then, in 2008, it dropped to 7,124 registrants. But for 2010, it is 9,786.
In 2006, the only other time the Alaska Libertarian Party had to do a registration drive to comply with the 2004 law, the drive didn’t get completed until April 2006.
Alaska Representative Max Gruenberg has indicated he will introduce a bill in 2010 to change the registration test to a flat number of registrants, similar to laws in Colorado and Louisiana. Both of those states require exactly 1,000 registrants.
If Alaska were to adopt Top 2, they could use a very minimal standard such as SOS Sam Reed has proposed for Washington, where only a minimal number of signatures would be needed (100) to establish the reality of a political party; while qualification for the presidential ballot was based on performance in the previous presidential election.
Alternatively, Alaska could set a qualification standard for the primary, and include non-affiliated candidates in the primary (somewhat based on the system used in Hawaii and Washington under the blanket primary).
So for example, a party could have its nominee appear on the general election ballot if the candidates for its nomination received 1% of the total vote cast in the primary; and an independence candidate could qualify by receiving 1% of the vote.
In Alaska, the Republican Party is the Libertarian Party. The ballot drive is kind of redundant.
“In Alaska, the Republican Party is the Libertarian Party. The ballot drive is kind of redundant.”
LOL!
Come on Eric. With all due respect. The GOP in any state is NOT the LP. In regards to the GOP party machine or the “heavyweight” members, I continue to find them as “ala-cart” libertarians. They are the first to ignore the “somewhat” important 1st amendment in regards to ballot access. Time for the GOP is behind them and demographics indicate they will be “well done” in about 10 years. We will see. Of course if GOP moves hard right, the CP and GOP can merge and have a wonderful time getting 12% of the vote–again looking at future demographics.
From Ohio.