Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A federal district court judge has set Thursday, April 30, as the day he will hear arguments on whether Rhode Island election laws unconstitutionally hamper newly formed political parties from getting on the statewide ballot.

The lawsuit is challenging provisions of state election law that set the number of petition signatures a new party must collect and the time it has to collect them if it wants to be listed on the statewide ballot in an election.

The suit has been filed on behalf of Kenneth Block and the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, which is being represented by the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Moderate party wants federal District Court Judge William E. Smith to find unconstitutional the state's requirement that new parties must either run a statewide candidate who gets at least 5 percent of the vote cast -- or gather signatures from at least 5 percent of the state's registered voters before being listed on the statewide ballot. Based on the 2008 election, the standard for 2010 is about 23,500 signatures.

The law also forbids parties from collection those signatures until Jan. 1 of the election year, a limit the Moderate Party said is too short and therefore an infringement of its rights.

The state has defended the laws, saying they set reasonable standards needed to prevent fringe groups from cluttering the ballot and confusing voters. The limits are no more stringent that those in other states, the state's filings have said, claiming that the thresholds didn't prevent the Moderate Party from getting on the ballot, just that the party would have to work for it.

 Tags  elections Moderate Party of Rhode Island

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