Text of the bill can be viewed here:

 

 

Rhode Island's current ballot access laws prohibit a new political party from collecting signatures to gain official state recognition in an off-election year, keeping that party from fund raising until the year of the election while existing parties can raise money during the off-election year.

 

These same laws also require a new political party to collect signatures equal to 5% of voter turnout for the previous presidential or gubernatorial election.  This threshold comes to 23,500 signatures based on turnout for the 2008 elections.

 

S 0203 seeks to remove start date restrictions on the signature collection process and lower the threshold percentage to 1%.

 

31 of 39 states that have signature collection laws for ballot access for new parties have no restrictions on start dates for those signature collections.

 

Using data from the 2006 elections, Rhode Island's signature petition burden relative to the population of the state is 1.75% (18,500 / 1,057,000).  The average signature burden relative to overall population (again using 2006 data) across all states that have laws allowing petitioning for ballot access is 0.54%.

 

 

To put this in perspective, with a population of 5.6 million people, Wisconsin requires 10,000 signatures.  Louisiana, with 4.2 million residents, requires 1,000 signatures.  Maryland, with 5.6 million residents, requires 10,000 signatures.

 

Full data on start dates and signature thresholds for all states is available by request.

 

Rep. Driver has filed companion legislation in the RI House.  Bill numbers are pending.

 

For more information about the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, please visit our web site at: www.moderate-ri.org.