LITTLE ROCK — In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, the Green Party of Arkansas says its opportunity to be included as a political party on Arkansas ballots is unconstitutionally thwarted by a state law.
Even though five of the party's candidates each received more than 3 percent of the votes cast in those races on Arkansas' 2008 ballots, the party won't be allowed on ballots in the next election cycle.
That's because state law requires that party candidates receive at least 3 percent of the votes cast in gubernatorial or presidential elections to retain access to the ballot.
The Green Party had a presidential candidate, Cynthia McKinney, who didn't campaign in Arkansas. It didn't have a gubernatorial candidate.
"What the law says is they're no longer a party, by virtue of not having received that 3 percent" in the gubernatorial or presidential race, Tim Humphries, legal counsel for Secretary of State Charlie Daniels, said Thursday.
Holly Dickson, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Green Party, said she hopes the legal challenge will change that, either by prompting the state Legislature to change the law on its own or persuading a federal judge to declare it unconstitutional.
"The secretary of state is really between a rock and a hard place on this, because he has to follow state law," Dickson said. "We really just wish the Legislature would fix the law."
Past efforts have not beensuccessful, she said, noting that Rep. Richard Carroll of North Little Rock, who was the Green Party's lone member of the Legislature, introduced a bill last year to lower the bar for third party ballot access, but the effort died in committee.
Dickson noted votes were made along party lines, with Democrats opposing the measure and Republicans favoring it.
"This is a tough issue for members of the General Assembly because these laws shield both parties from competition," Dickson said, noting that "about half" of Arkansas legislative races tend to be uncontested.
Carroll has since said he will seek re-election as a Democrat.
"In the 2008 election, the Green Party's candidates received hundreds of thousands of votes, far surpassing the 3 percent threshold," the ACLU said in a news release about the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says Rebekah Kennedy, the Green Party's candidate for U.S. Senate, received 207,076 votes, or 20 percent of more than 1 million votes cast in Arkansas in that election.
The suit says the party's candidates for U.S. House of Representatives seats were also well above 3 percent, with 2nd District candidate Deb McFarland receiving 64,398 votes, or 23.22 percent of the vote; 3rd District candidate Abel Noah Tomlinson receiving 58,850 votes, or 21.5 percent; and 4th District candidate Joshua Drake receiving 32,603 votes, nearly 14 percent of the vote in that race.
Carroll won in Arkansas House District 39.
The lawsuit states that 1,086,617 votes were cast in Arkansas in the 2008 presidential race. Three percent of that number is 32,599 - a number that the Green Party's candidates for various offices exceeded altogether.
"We filed in federal court to ask the court to declare that there is sufficient support that has been demonstrated that the party shouldn't have to go out and collect signatures" seeking ballot access before each election, Dickson said.
"The Green Party clearly represents the interests of a large number of Arkansans," said Rita Sklar, executive 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. That's just not the way democracy is supposed to work."
Dickson said that according to a chart compiled a couple ofyears ago by Richard Winger, a ballot-access expert, a "slight majority" of states consider "any statewide vote" in deciding whether a third party may have ballot access in the next election cycle.
The case has been assigned to Chief U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes.
"We will ask him to declare that the statute is impermissibly restrictive," Dickson said. "It would then fall back to the Legislature to fix it."
Humphries said he doesn't know yet how the state will respond to the lawsuit.
Arkansas, Pages 12 on 08/29/2009