The Florida Secretary of State’s Division of Elections recently denied a list of candidates intended for a presidential primary submitted by the Libertarian Party of Florida, as indicated in state correspondence discussing the matter.
In a letter to the Florida Secretary of State on November 24, 2023, the Libertarian Party of Florida submitted a list of eleven candidates for placement on the Florida presidential primary ballot. The candidates included Charles Ballay, Jacob Hornberger, Beau Lindsey, Lars Mapstead, Chase Oliver, Michael Rectenwald, Joshua Rodriguez, Robert Sansone, Joshua Smith, and Mike ter Maat. Notably, the list also featured independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite Kennedy not seeking the Libertarian Party nomination.
However, in a response dated December 1, 2023, the Florida Department of State’s Division of Elections office denied the Libertarian Party a primary ballot. The office cited Florida Statute 103.101, which requires that each political party, “other than a minor political party,” submit a list of their candidates. According to the Department of State, the Libertarian Party of Florida is categorized as a registered minor political party.
“Access to the presidential preference primary ballot is governed by section 103.101, Florida Statutes, which requires each political part other than a minor political party to submit a list of their candidates to us and for us to place only those listed candidates on the ballot,” the Chief of the Bureau of Election Records responded in the letter. “Since the Libertarian Party of Florida is a registered minor political party in Florida, the names submitted will not appear on the 2024 Presidential Preference Primary ballot.”
Under section 103.101, there is no outlined process for minor parties to host a presidential primary.
Instead, the Florida Department of State advised the Libertarian Party of Florida on the procedure for placing a candidate on the general election ballot. According to public records, the Libertarian Party of Florida did not issue a follow-up response to the letter.
With thanks to Joseph Wendt for providing Independent Political Report with copies of the letters referenced above. Readers of Independent Political Report can also access letters on a database maintained by the Florida Secretary of State here.
The White decision Mr. Winger mentioned also alludes that a minor party with enough support should be provided a taxpayer-funded primary (bear in the mind that the LP national platform calls for the end of all taxpayer-funded primaries).
Texas had at the time of the White decision “four methods [] provided for nominating candidates to the ballot for the general election” with the hardest to reach method being “Candidates of political parties whose gubernatorial candidate polled more than 200,000 votes in the last general election may be nominated by primary election only, and the nominees of these parties automatically appear on the ballot. Tex. Election Code, Art. 13.02 (1967).” The court wanted a new party to meet a minimum standard to determine how that party should be treated and this process of asking a judge to make that review has existed ever since.
Florida Libertarian candidates in statewide election contests have received over 200,000 votes (Gary Johnson for President 2016 and Adrian Wyllie for Governor 2014). Seems like Florida has met the standard set by the US Supreme Court in White. This is an oversimplified conclusion but one that starts a series of questions that requires the court to answer to voters and Libertarians in Florida who deserve a response. This is especially if they are jaded about the electoral process and see it all as a rigged game.
There are a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about challenging ballot access laws. Several LP state affiliates are suing in federal court right now for the right to be heard and the right of individual voters to express their political opinions without unreasonably restrictive politically-motivated state barriers. These lawsuits sometimes take years to conclude, if the judge who is a politically-connected attorney appointed by a partisan officeholder even allows such lawsuits to be heard on their merits. It has been a good two decades since the last landmark legal decision was given in favor of ballot access to the non-state supported political parties (which was about presidential preference primaries in California). California Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567 (2000) (Referring to the “special place” the First Amendment reserves for the process by which a political party selects a standard bearer).
Yet, we want to support an independent, non-state approved political change to American politics need goals and a rallying cry and an effort to focus attention to. Lawsuits may not succeed but carefully sought they are the knock on the door or a necessary process to civil discourse. At some point, political winds will change and as more voters continue to see that the two-party system has ultimately failed to provide them a working government and a fractured nation, the incredibly loud demand for more choices will be responded to by the courts and state legislatures alike to change the rules. But the demand needs to start somewhere.
At the very least, a successful lawsuit challenging Florida’s dangerously anti-democratic electoral laws will require the Republican-dominated Florida legislature to rewrite laws written over 100 years ago by the then Democratic-dominated Florida legislature during the Jim Crow era.
Read American Party of Texas v. White, 415 U.S. 767 (1974) here:
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108994/american-party-of-texas-v-white/
Primaries are toxic to smaller parties.
LPF fights 30 years to stay off primaries while otherwise receiving equal treatment.
The newbies then want to be on primary.
In 1974 the U.S. Supreme Court said in American Party of Texas v White that the US Constitution does not require states to provide primaries for all qualified parties, and that it was constitutional for Texas to limit government-administered primaries to parties that had got 20% of the vote in the last election.