The group considering whether to offer a third-party candidate on the 2024 presidential ballot says they have more than enough party enrollees to meet the requirement in Maine.
No Labels said this week they have “surpassed the threshold” of 5,000 party members and will continue to add more up to the November 2024 election.
“Our country is so profoundly divided and most Americans don’t have any confidence the likely major party nominees have an ability or a willingness to bring us back together,” Maryanne Martini, a spokeswoman for the group, said. “Americans so clearly want better choices than they are being offered, and No Labels is meeting that need by getting nationwide ballot access.”
But that attempt to gain access got off to a rocky start this spring when Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows expressed “serious concerns” about tactics used to enroll new members.
In a May 11 letter to the group, Bellows said her office had heard from several local clerks who were told by town residents they thought they were signing a petition, not that they were signing up to be a member of a new political party.
Bellows, a Democrat, also sent letters to 6,953 Mainers who enrolled in the No Labels Party to make sure they understood they had changed their party affiliation.
By the end of August, the number of No Labels enrollees had dropped to 6,155, a decline of nearly 800 registrants, according to Bellows’ office.
In an interview, Bellows said party affiliation is especially important heading into the March 2024 primary elections because voters who are already enrolled in a party will not be able to show up on Election Day and change their affiliation.
“One thing that’s important for voters to recognize is if they are in a political party, they are sacrificing their right to vote in another primary,” she said.
Those who want to change their party affiliation to vote in a primary must do so 15 days before the election. Those who are unenrolled — roughly one-third of Maine registered voters — can choose which primary they want to vote, thanks to the recent passage of a new state law.
The No Labels effort comes at a time when voters across the country continue to be deeply divided. A CNN-SSRS poll released Thursday showed former Republican President Donald Trump leading Democratic President Joe Biden by just one percentage point, 47% to 46%.
The poll highlighted trouble for Biden, with two-thirds of Democratic-leaning voters saying the party should not nominate him in 2024.
Maine has a history of supporting third-party candidates, first by electing independent Jim Longley governor in 1974, followed by Angus King in 1994. King, who remains an independent, has represented Maine in the U.S. Senate since 2013.
Another interesting wrinkle in Maine is the use of ranked choice voting in federal elections. That means a third-party candidate could not be a spoiler because his or her votes would be redistributed to other candidates if neither of the top two get more than 50% of the vote.
But that is a concern nationally, leading Martini to say that No Labels won’t run a candidate unless they think he or she can win.
“No Labels will only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we believe it has a realistic shot to win in the Electoral College,” she wrote.
She also indicated that interest in a third-party nominee is “off the charts” across the country, including in Maine.
“People know our country can do better, and they think more choices on the ballot strengthens our democracy and improves their choices,” she said. “Our work in Maine reflects the expressed hope of Maine residents and Americans across the nation for commonsense solutions for our country.”