Reposted from Ballot Access News:
On March 15, Lynne Williams announced that her petition drive to get on the Green Party’s primary ballot for Governor will not succeed. See this story. Although the Green Party is ballot-qualified in Maine, it still has ballot access problems. That is because Maine is one of three states that makes [...]

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Via email and LP blog:
Dear Friend of Liberty,
I need your help to get the Libertarian Party on the ballot in Illinois.
The Illinois LP has developed a great slate of candidates this year. But Illinois voters won’t get the chance to vote for them unless the Illinois LP gets ballot access. To do that, [...]

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In North Carolina’s Lincoln Tribune, Sara Burrows reports on the efforts of one unaffiliated candidate for State House, Mark Brody, in his fight against the ballot access regime constructed to protect the Democratic-Republican two-party state and duopoly system of government:
Unaffiliated congressional candidate Mark Brody is suing the state over what he calls unfair and unconstitutional [...]

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In an email to supporters today, the ballot access reform organization Free and Equal is asking people to contact Oklahoma state legislators and urge them to pass a ballot access reform bill.  The email:
Oklahoma’s largest newspaper, The Oklahoman, mentioned Free & Equal in an editorial titled “Access endeavor” on March 6. The daily paper claimed [...]

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Sent to contact.ipr@gmail.com:
The Free & Equal Elections Foundation has made a financial commitment to a lobbying effort in Oklahoma aimed at easing the nation’s highest petition requirement for unqualified political parties.
The foundation has given an initial grant to Oklahomans for Ballot Access Reform (OBAR) a coalition of the state’s third parties to help fund [...]

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Ballot Access News:
Senator David Shafer (R-Duluth) has introduced SB 359, which improves ballot access for parties that have already attained qualified status for statewide office, and also partially legalizes fusion.
The biggest change made by the bill is that it expands ballot access to all partisan office, for parties that are in the present situation of [...]

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The comment period ended on a ruling that lists ballot-qualified parties for Ohio in 2010, making the ruling final. The ballot-qualified parties are: the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party and the Socialist Party.

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The Green Party of Arizona is running a petition drive to try to get ballot access for the 2010 elections. They have also filed a lawsuit, Arizona Green Party v Barnett, to challenge some of the parameters for the petition drive. There has been recent publicity about the petition drive and the lawsuit (though, some of the articles have incorrect information.)

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Posted in Ballot Access News:
The December 25 issue of the Durango (Colorado) Herald has this story about Joelle Riddle’s lawsuit against a law that says no one may be an independent candidate if that person has been a member of a qualified party an entire year before filing. Riddle is a County Commissioner who wants [...]

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Posted in Ballot Access News:
On November 12, New Hampshire State Senator Theodore Gatsas resigned his seat in the New Hampshire Senate, because he had just been elected Mayor of Manchester. Shortly afterwards, the New Hampshire Executive Council said there will be a special election to fill that empty seat on February 16. It said that [...]

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Posted at Ballot Access News:
On December 16, the ACLU Voting Rights office filed a lawsuit in federal court against three Nebraska ballot access restrictions: (1) a law passed in 2007 that requires statewide independent candidate petitions (for office other than president) to include at least 50 signatures from each of 31 counties; (2) a [...]

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Posted at Green Party Watch by Dave Schwab:

Theresa Amato, who served as campaign manager for Ralph Nader’s 2000 Green and 2004 independent runs for president, has an opinion piece in the Harvard Law Record entitled “The Two Party Ballot Suppresses Third Party Change”. She notes that although Nader wrote a piece on discriminatory ballot access [...]

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The North Carolina Supreme Court will soon be hearing Libertarian Party of North Carolina v State Board of Elections, a challenge to the state’s ballot access laws for minor parties.The Court wants all amicus curiae briefs in by December 23, 2009. There are many groups that hope to file on the side of the minor parties.

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The Billings Gazette reports that volunteers have collected roughly half the signatures necessary to put the Constitution Party on the ballot in Wyoming next year . . .

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The Harvard Law Record published an article by Theresa Amato about the need for ballot access reform. The article also refers to (and shows) a 1958 article co-written by Ralph Nader on the same topic. Theresa Amato is a public interest lawyer, former Nader national campaign manager, and the author of Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny published this year by The New Press.

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