The Libertarian Party of Tennessee sued the state, claiming that a law requiring its candidates to get more than 40,000 signatures in order to be listed on general election ballots is “unduly burdensome.”
A lawsuit filed at the end of last week in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee names Secretary of State Tre Hargett and Elections Coordinator Mark Goins.
Per state law, third-party candidates seeking to be listed on general election ballots as members of their party (rather than being listed as Independents) must capture signatures equal to 2.5 percent of the number of votes cast for all gubernatorial candidates in the most recent election for governor.
For the upcoming election cycle, Libertarians and other third parties must record 43,000 signatures. The Libertarian Party says that garnering that many signatures will be impossible.
Republicans and Democrats, meanwhile, only need 25 signatures to gain ballot access.
The lawsuit demands that the ballot access law be struck down as unconstitutional and that Libertarian candidates be granted ballot access as members of the Libertarian Party on the ballot for the November 5, 2024 elections.
Just one day before the Libertarian Party’s suit, The League of Women Voters – Tennessee (LWVTN) filed a federal lawsuit challenging the legality of a new law that requires Tennessee primary voters to be affiliated with the political party whose primary elections they plan to vote in, as reported by The Tennessee Star.
The law in question is 2023’s HB0828, which took effect on May 17 and “requires the officer of elections at each polling place to post a sign on election day informing voters that it is against the law to vote in a political party’s primary without being a bona fide member of or affiliated with that political party, or to declare allegiance to that party without the intent to affiliate with that party.”
LWVTN says that the term “bona fide” is impossible to define and that it could create confusion for voters.
That law is meant to prevent large numbers of Democrats from banding together to vote for a preferred Republican primary candidate, or vice versa, in Tennessee’s open primaries.
– – –
Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter/X.
Photo “People Voting” by Tim Evanson. CC BY-SA 2.0.
