On June 6, a conference committee in the Arizona legislature amended HB 2305 to make it vastly more difficult for members of small qualified parties to get themselves on a primary ballot. Current law sets the number of signatures needed for a candidate to get on his or her own party’s primary ballot as a percentage of the number of members of that party. But the bill changes that, so that the number of signatures needed is a percentage of all the registered voters from all parties.
Existing law requires signatures equal to one-half of 1% of party membership, to get on the primary ballot for statewide office. Thus Libertarians only need about 125 signatures of party members, and Greens only need about 27 signatures, and members of Americans Elect only need about 2 signatures. If the bill is signed into law, members of all parties, large and small alike, would need 5,376 signatures of party members to get on a primary ballot. For statewide office, the bill requires one-sixth of 1% of all the registered voters. It would continue to be true that only party members, and registered independents, could sign these primary petitions. This is the same type of system used in Massachusetts and Maine to keep small qualified party members from getting on their own party’s primary ballot.
If the bill is signed into law, there is reason to believe it would be held unconstitutional. In Storer v Brown, the U.S. Supreme Court said that petitions should be evaluated by arithmetic…if the number of required signatures, divided by the number of eligible signers, is greater than 5%, the law is almost certainly unconstitutional. HB 2305, as applied to the Green Party, would require a number of signatures approximately equal to the number of all the registered Greens in the state. The state would probably defend the law by saying that Greens have the ability to get primary signatures from the ranks of registered independents. But the party could argue that it has a constitutional right to exclude independents from voting in its primary, and if it did that, its members then couldn’t get primary signatures from registered independents.
The number of write-ins (for parties other than newly-qualifying parties) needed to be nominated in a primary is equal to the number of signatures needed to get on the primary ballot, so using write-ins at the primary would also be virtually impossible if the bill becomes law.
I have a sudden feeling that ALEC is behind this bill. It seems like something they’d want to do, make it nearly impossible for parties that would disrupt their plans to exist.
Did the SCOTUS math morons pick the 5 percent number out of the trash in Dumb City ???
Each election is NEW.
EQUAL ballot access requirements for ALL candidates for the same office in the same area.
SOOOOOO difficult for the SCOTUS morons to understand.
Your signature requirements are way off:
http://www.azsos.gov/election/2012/info/2012_statewide_sig_req.pdf
In 2012, Libertarian candidates needed at least 5,671 signatures to get on the ballot for the two statewide offices, U.S. Senate and seats on the Corporation Commission.
http://www.azsos.gov/election/2012/info/2012_new_party_sig_req.pdf
In 2012, Americans Elect and Green candidates needed at least 939 signatures to get on the ballot for these statewide offices.
Sorry, the Libertarian candidates needed only 113 signatures. I mistakenly looked at the number of signatures needed by a Republican candidate. But the two “new parties” did need 939 signatures under current law.
This is due to the current law, Arizona Revised Statutes 16-322 (C):
C. In primary elections the signature requirement for party nominees, other than nominees of the parties entitled to continued representation pursuant to section 16-804, is at least one-tenth of one per cent of the total vote for the winning candidate or candidates for governor or presidential electors at the last general election within the district. Signatures must be obtained from qualified electors who are qualified to vote for the candidate whose nomination petition they are signing.
Link to statute:
http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/16/00322.htm&Title=16&DocType=ARS
Newly-qualifying parties do have a severe petition burden already, but they have a way around it, because newly-qualifying party members can run as a write-in in their own party’s primary, and get nominated with just one write-in vote, as long as no one else gets more votes. This is because the Socialist Workers Party won a federal case against Arizona in 1980.
Trey, are you actually the leader of the Arizona AEP?
Because your Secretary of State’s website is saying something completely different.
In fact, if you’re claiming that you’re in charge of something that you’re not, and the leaders of that party (who are legally in charge) find out what you’re doing, especially with that website, then you might be in some legal hot water very soon.