The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Libertarian Party to contest New Hampshire's HB 1542, a new state law that restricts the time candidates have to get their names on the ballot. The law stipulates that third-party candidates who want to get their name on the ballot must wait until January 1 of the election year to start collecting the necessary signatures. Because so many signatures are required — about 21,000, which is equivalent to 3 percent of the vote total from the previous election — third-party officials see the timeline as too squeezed.
Gilles Bissonnette, a staff attorney for the Civil Liberties Union, said his organization aims to have the law declared a violation of the state constitution, arguing that it disadvantages smaller parties that do not have the resources to collect enough signatures during the election year alone.
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