On July 26, the Ohio Libertarian Party sent this two-page letter to the Ohio Secretary of State, asking him to rule that the Constitution, Green, Libertarian and Socialist Parties should not be removed from the ballot before the 2012 election. The parties were put on the ballot by court order in 2008, and they have remained on ever since because the old ballot access law had been declared unconstitutional in 2006 and had not been replaced. But, on July 1, the Governor signed a bill that purports to make the Ohio law constitutional.
The letter outlines precedents in which courts and election administrators have ruled that newly-passed ballot access hurdles should not be implemented in the middle of petitioning season. One of those precedents is from Ohio, in 1971.
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That’s good. What is the requirement for a party to stay on the ballot?
A vote of 5% for the office at the top of the ticket (president in presidential years, governor in midterm years). The only parties besides Dem and Rep that have met the Ohio vote test in the last 50 years have been the American Independent Party in 1968, and the Reform Party in 1996.