The Green Party is suing Arkansas election officials over its losing a guaranteed spot on next year's ballot, arguing that the state ignored the party's victory in a House seat last year.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on the party's behalf Thursday in federal court. It challenges state law that decertifies the Green Party for not receiving enough votes.
Political parties are required to get 3 percent of the total votes cast in either the presidential or gubernatorial election in Arkansas to be considered major parties in the state. If a party doesn't, it must undergo a signature petition drive for recognition.
The ACLU claims in the lawsuit that Secretary of State Charlie Daniels should have acknowledged a Green Party candidate win in the state Legislature as a sign that the group has remained a viable political party.
"The Green Party clearly represents the interest of a large number of Arkansans," said Rita Sklar, director of the ACLU of Arkansas. "But the Democratic and Republican parties have set up an unconstitutional system to deny ballot access to legitimate third parties that have substantial voter support in order to shield themselves from competition."
Tim Humphries, attorney for the secretary of state's office, declined to comment on the lawsuit and said the state would file a response in the next 20 days.
The lawsuit also claims that the state was the first since 1906 to remove a party's designation after State Rep. Richard Carroll won a legislative seat as a Green Party candidate.
Carroll was elected last year after Democrats refused to seat Dwayne Dobbins, a former lawmaker who resigned to avoid a felony sexual assault conviction. Dobbins, who left his seat in 2005, filed at the last minute for the seat last year and sued to get on the ballot after the Democratic Party blocked his candidacy. But Dobbins' arguments were rejected by the state Supreme Court, which declined to order his name be put onto the ballot.
Carroll, a boilermaker from North Little Rock who has since switched parties and become a Democrat, beat two write-in candidates to become the highest-ranking Green Party elected official in the country.
The Green Party was awarded a guaranteed spot on the ballot last year after submitting 12,000 signatures - 2,000 more than was needed under state law. The party said in the lawsuit that the petition campaign cost the party about $20,000 and absorbed all the Green Party's funds.
"It's a difficult thing to do every year," said Rebekah Kennedy, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and the party's nominee for the U.S. Senate last year. "Although we're capable of doing it every year, it consumes resources that should go toward campaigning."
A federal judge in 2006 had ordered the state to recognize the Green Party, ruling that the number of signatures the state required to win a spot on the ballot - 3 percent of the votes cast in the previous election for governor - was unconstitutional. Lawmakers the following year changed the petition requirement to 10,000 signatures.
Under state law, the party would have had to win 32,599 votes in the presidential race to get a guaranteed spot on next year's ballot. Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney won 3,470 votes.
The party noted that its candidates for Congress won more than 32,599 votes in each of their races. For example, Kennedy won more than 207,000 votes, or about 20 percent of the ballots cast in the Senate race. Kennedy lost to Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. Republicans did not field a candidate against Pryor.
"Despite surpassing the party-recognition vote threshold designed to measure whether a party has a significant modicum of support in a U.S. Senate race and the three U.S. House races it contests, the Green Party of Arkansas has been denied its political party designation and will be forced to engage in a costly petition campaign should it contest any races in 2010," according to the lawsuit.