In early 2011, the Florida legislature passed HB 1355, which said that ballot-qualified parties could not place their presidential nominee on the ballot unless the FEC recognized that party as a “national committee”, or unless the party submitted a petition signed by 1% of the number of registered voters. The bill was so unclear, it did not even specify whether this petition should name the presidential nominee or not.
The Federal Election web page lists only the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and Reform Parties as national committees. Scroll down to “III. Political Party Committees.” Under the chart there is a footnote, marked with a double asterisk, naming the parties other than Democratic and Republican.
The FEC granted national committee status to the Socialist Party in December 1980, and to the Natural Law Party in late September 1992, and has never formally revoked their status. But the web page doesn’t list them because they haven’t filed financial reports recently. FEC officials say it is ambiguous whether those two parties are still “national committees.” Obviously, if the FEC doesn’t know which parties are national committees, it is absurd for Florida to use that criterion for ballot access.
A further absurdity is that the Reform Party in each of the last two presidential elections polled under 1,000 votes in the entire nation for its presidential nominee, yet under Florida’s law, it is safely on the ballot this year. Several parties polled substantially more votes for President in 2012 than the Reform Party did. The Peace & Freedom Party polled 67,037 for Roseanne Barr; the Justice Party polled 40,257 for Rocky Anderson; and America’s Independent Party polled 39,997 for Thomas Hoefling. All three of those parties were on the 2012 ballot for President in Florida because in 2011 the Secretary of State decided not to enforce the FEC-recognition law. But under the new strict behavior of the Florida Secretary of State, they do not qualify.
Are the 2011 FL moron hacks involved the same moron hacks who caused 2000 Bush v. Gore ???
Can FL be purged from the U.S.A. ???
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Different Secretary of State. In Florida, Secretaries of State are appointed by the Governor.
Esp. the moron hacks in the FL legislature in 2000 and 2011.
Do the FL moron hacks also incorporate the election laws of regimes like Russia, China, etc. ???
The FEC website does list the SPUSA’s Socialist National Committee as a qualified party national committee. And, in contrast to the Natural Law and Reform parties, it remains actively subject to financial reporting as such. The erroneous statement regarding SPUSA that you received from an FEC representative by phone ostensibly stems from a recent error on the FEC website which has mislabeled the Socialist National Committee as being associated with the SWP, rather than the SPUSA. However the FEC does not regard the SNC’s actively qualified national committee to be any more ambiguous than that of the DNC and RNC.
Matt, can you give us a link to anything on the FEC web page that mentions the Socialist Party?
http://www.fec.gov/fecviewer/CandidateCommitteeDetail.do?candidateCommitteeId=C00129668&tabIndex=3
At the top, under “2016 Committee Designation,” you will see it is designated “Type-Y: Qualified Party.” That designation is applied exclusively to the FEC committee-details pages of the seven parties which have received FEC advisory opinions conferring national committee status (Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Socialist, Reform, Natural Law, Green, and Constitution), and to state party committees which have been likewise conferred with qualified state party committee status. (Up until very recently the qualified party designation was followed by citation to the FECA provision from which FEC construes authority to confer qualified party national committee status, though that’s apparently been removed by the most recent layout redesign).
The “Party” designation category under the “2016 Committee Designation” heading for committees was just recently added with the latest layout redesign, and someone at the FEC mistakenly listed the Socialist National Committee’s “Party” designation as ‘Socialist Workers Party.’
The FEC advisory opinion conferring qualified party national committee status to the SPUSA/Socialist National Committee is at: http://saos.fec.gov/aodocs/1980-121.pdf
*Eight parties, I meant to state (not seven)