Iowa Party Registration Case Resolved

Iowa Third Party Registration Case Resolved

Ballot Access News reports that the lawsuit filed by the Iowa Libertarian and Green Parties in 2005, with the support of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, was settled this week.

Iowa will now print a blank line on the “political party” question on the voter registration forms. Voters will be allowed to register into any “unqualified party” that (1) submits 850 signatures and (2) has placed candidates on the ballot in the last ten years.

Before this agreement, the only way Iowa law allowed for voters to register in a third party was for that group to earn qualified party status. There was only one route to that status: winning 2 percent of the vote for president or governor. Two parties qualified in recent years -- Reform in 1996 and the Greens in 2000. Both lost their status after two years by failing to poll 2 percent for governor.

Other parties that have run candidates in the last ten years include the Constitution, Socialist, Socialist Workers, and Pirate parties, and the now-defunct Natural Law Party.

Kansas is now the last state in which it is physically impossible for a voter to register into any party that is not a ballot-qualified party.