Bills to lower the amount of signatures needed to become a recognized party in Alabama and Oklahoma, two of the most difficult states for ballot access, will be voted on this week.
In Alabama, SB 211 would cut the amount of required signatures in half, from 3% of the last general election’s gubernatorial vote to 1.5%. This would lower the amount of signatures needed to become a party from 35,413 to 17,707.
Click here to read the article on Alabama’s legislation.
In Oklahoma, SB 2181 would lower the amount of required signatures from the current standard of 5% of the last general election’s top-of-the-ticket vote to 3%. This would reduce the amount necessary to become a party from 41,188 to 24,712.
Click here to read the article on Oklahoma’s legislation.
Thanks to Richard Winger, editor and publisher of Ballot Access News, for his help with this post.
I’d like to launch Free The Vote as an organization. Aimee Love already made a bunch of graphics for it, like the one I used in this post, but I could use some help from someone to reserve the URLs, social media accounts, and so on.
I wish we could get some traction on this in Wisconsin. I tried to take a whack at it with OAI, and talked to several legislators and a lot more staffers, but none of them would bite. Some were pretty blunt about why they like the ballot access hurdle.
Maybe it will be something we can circle back to with LPWI in the coming months, and try and make a bigger push for some kind of lowering of the thresholds.