Green Party drama shows that party recognition law needs tightening

• We must balance freedom of association rights with the need for manageable elections when setting rules for recognizing a political party
• North Carolina’s party recognition laws attempt to strike that balance
• The recent party-line vote at the State Board of Elections on recognizing the Green Party shows that the law needs clarification

All states must strike a balance between the rights of political parties to ballot access and the need for reasonable ballot lengths and clear choices for voters. While North Carolina’s party ballot access law does a good job of striking that balance, a recent vote at the State Board of Elections (SBE) on the status of the Green Party exposed the need to clarify that law.

Balancing the right to form parties with practical election administration

Americans have a First Amendment right to freedom of association. That right includes forming political parties that have a reasonable chance to put candidates up for election. Denying reasonable ballot access to new or minor parties also violates their 14th Amendment equal treatment rights.

There is a government interest in running elections smoothly, however. Part of that interest includes having a reasonable number of candidates on the ballot. Too many candidates lead to longer ballots, which increases costs, leads to longer election lines, and causes fewer votes in down-ballot races. The United States Supreme Court recognized that interest in Jenness v. Fortson (1971):

There is surely an important State interest in requiring some preliminary showing of a significant modicum of support before printing the name of a political organization’s candidate on the ballot — the interest, if no other, in avoiding confusion, deception, and even frustration of the democratic process at the general election.

The Supreme Court has also found that overly restrictive state requirements for party ballot access are unconstitutional, however. The high court noted in Williams v. Rhodes (1968) that “the right to form a party for the advancement of political goals means little if a party can be kept off the election ballot.” To that end, the court has struck down excessive petition requirements for party ballot access.

Of course, freedom of association rights do not guarantee that parties will get many votes or win office. Likewise, there is no government interest in preventing parties from access to the ballot because officials believe they will only act as spoilers for one of the major parties in an upcoming election.

North Carolina’s attempt to balance access and practicality

To balance freedom of association and the state’s interest in smooth-running elections, North Carolina allows minor parties access to the ballot but makes those parties jump through one of several hoops to gain that access.

North Carolina law requires parties to meet at least one of three requirements to get on the ballot:

• The party’s candidates for governor or president received at least two percent of the vote in the last election
• The party submits a petition signed by “one‑quarter of one percent (0.25%) of the total number of voters who voted in the most recent general election for governor”
• The party’s presidential nominee was on the ballot in at least 70 percent of all states (35)

The goal is to require parties to demonstrate “a significant modicum of support” before they are allowed to be on the ballot.

Based on the vote totals of the 2024 governor’s race, new parties wishing to get on the ballot for 2026 or 2028 will need to collect 13,979 valid signatures. Getting on the ballot through the petition process can be difficult, especially if one of the major parties is trying to stop them.

Using information provided by Democratic Party lawyers, Democrats on the SBE have manipulated the verification process to try to keep minor parties off the ballot. Democrats are singled out here not because Republicans are more virtuous, but because Democrats have until recently held the majority on the board.

It took lawsuits from the Green Party in 2022 and the Justice for All Party in 2024 for those parties to get on the ballot, a sign that SBE had taken too restrictive an approach toward recognizing those parties.

Should the Green Party stay on the ballot in North Carolina?

On June 19, the SBE voted 3-2 along party lines to allow the Green Party to continue having ballot access.

Why was the vote not unanimous? It came down to differences in interpreting state law allowing a party (“group of voters”) ballot access if “the group of voters had a candidate nominated by that group on the general election ballot of at least seventy percent (70%) of the states in the prior Presidential election.”

The state Green Party submitted documents showing that Jill Stein, their nominee for president, was on 38 ballots.

So, was Stein the Green party nominee for president in 2024? Yes.

Was she on the ballot in at least 35 states (70 percent)? Again, yes.

So, it would appear that the case for granting ballot access to the Green Party is clear. Democrats on the board pointed out that the case is not so cut and dried, however. While Stein was on the ballot in 38 states, she was on the ballot as the nominee of the Green Party or its affiliates in only 33 states. Stein was on the ballot as an independent in three other states (such as Alabama) and as a petition candidate in two more (Alaska and Nebraska).

That leaves the question of whether the Green Party should be on the ballot in 2026 open to interpretation, especially given SBE’s record of limiting access and losing subsequent lawsuits.

Board member Stacy “Four” Eggars noted the SBE’s recent problems with denying minor parties ballot access as part of his reason for supporting the Green Party’s bid:

I’m also concerned that this board’s track record in opposing third-party access to the ballot until recently is quite poor, and that if there’s going to be a question or a dispute as to does this make it or does it not, and if we’re in a clear gray area, that I would err on the side of more choices for the voters and more access.

That said, the Democrats on the board are probably closer to the law’s intent, which is to restrict ballot access to parties that can demonstrate “a significant modicum of support.” Even if the Green Party’s efforts got Stein on the ballot as an independent or petition candidate in some states, it showed organizational weakness that the party itself could not get placed on those states’ ballots.

The General Assembly could help by clarifying the law. Perhaps legislators could change the third option so that a party qualifies only if a candidate nominated by that party was on the general election ballot in at least 70 percent of states’ ballots in the previous election specifically as the nominee of that party.

Without such clarifications, we will have more split board votes and more lawsuits in the future.

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