Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to swat down a last-ditch effort by the Arizona Libertarian Party to make it easier to put its candidates on the general election ballot.
In new legal filings, attorneys for Hobbs acknowledge that prior to 2015 a Libertarian contender for governor or statewide office could qualify for the ballot with as few as 133 signatures on nomination papers. Now contenders have to get about 3,000 supporters.
But Assistant Attorney General Kara Karlson said that’s not unfair, even though it represents close to 10 percent of all registered Libertarians.
She said those seeking to run under the Libertarian banner are entitled to seek signatures not just from members of their own party but the more than 1.2 million Arizonans who are registered as independents. And Karlson said the fact that Libertarians want to gather support from only among their own tiny party is a “self-inflicted harm” and not because of anything done to them by the state.
Information from By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services via multiple sources
