URGENT UPDATE: This bill is now scheduled for a hearing in the State Senate on April 3rd and will soon be scheduled for a hearing in the State House. Now is the time for your legislators to hear from you. See more details below.
If you’d like to see third-party candidates able to use their party labels on the ballot rather than being forced to run as “Independent” candidates, then we need your help. Keep reading to find out what you can do.
A bill has been introduced in the current session of the Tennessee state legislature (designated as HB0626 in the House, and SB0288 in the Senate) that would do just that.
Currently the Democrat and Republican parties are the only groups that meet the legal definition of “political party” in Tennessee. As recognized political parties they are granted some special privileges not available to third-party groups like the Libertarian Party. The nominated candidates of recognized political parties get an automatic right to be listed on the ballot, they get to use their party label on the ballot, and the government will bear the cost of their use of primary elections to nominate their candidates.
The state says that the qualification standards for new political parties should be at a pretty high threshold because of the cost the state incurs when political parties nominate their candidates by primary, but that is only one of three privileges granted to political parties. We have previously asked the legislature to simply allow “Independent” candidates to designate a party label for themselves if they wish. The legislature rejected that idea on the grounds that there was not enough of a qualification process to prevent silly ballot labels.
This new bill would solve the problem with an approach used in 19 other states. Basically it would create a two-tier system, creating major and minor parties, respectively called “political parties” and “partisan organizations”, with lower qualification thresholds for becoming a partisan organization.
Partisan organizations would nominate their candidates by convention at their own expense rather than having the option for a primary election, so it would cost the government absolutely nothing to implement this solution. It avoids the state’s concern about the cost of primaries while allowing qualified partisan organizations to have the ballot access and party label privileges currently only granted to Democrat and Republican nominees.
It’s a good solution for both the taxpayers and for third-party groups. It will provide voters more useful information on the ballots, properly identifying party affiliations for partisan candidates currently forced to label themselves as “Independent” candidates.
Not only is this bill better policy than the existing law, but the 6th Circuit Federal Appeals Court (which covers Tennessee) has ruled Ohio’s ballot access laws for new political parties to be unconstitutionally restrictive, though they are LESS restrictive than our laws in Tennessee are. The citation for this case is 462 F 3d 579, Libertarian Party of Ohio v. Blackwell. Our legislature needs to perform their duty to the citizens of Tennessee and correct this flaw in our law.
What can you do to help this bill become law?
1) Sign our online petition calling on the legislature to pass HB0626 / SB0288 and improve the fairness of our system for third-party candidates.
2) Contact your own State Representative and State Senator and ask them to co-sponsor HB0626 / SB0288. Be kind, polite, persuasive, and professional. If Senator Tim Burchett or Rep. Mike Turner is from your district, thank them for sponsoring the bill.
3) We need to get this bill through the subcommittees and onto the floor for a vote.
- The initial State Senate hearing in the State & Local Government committee was held on March 20th. It was suspected that we were one vote short of success, so it was re-scheduled for a second hearing on April 3rd. The Senators we need to convince before April 3rd are: Joe Finney, Joe Haynes, Thlema Harper, and Bo Watson.
- On March 21st the bill successfully made it through the Government Operations committee in the State House. Next it will be assigned a hearing date in the Elections subcommittee of the State & Local Government Operations committee. The Elections subcommittee needs to hear from you now.
After you contact the members of these committees, contact your own state legislators asking for their support as well. Visit www.legislature.state.tn.us, click on either “House” or "Senate", and then “Committees” to find a listing of who is on each committee and how to contact those legislators.
Click here to read the bill and monitor its status.
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