Green opportunity

Maine’s Green Party, rumored to have been stomped out by the Legislature last session, is instead very much alive and today is playing host in Topsham to 19 other state Green organizations. The Maine party currently is on life-extension courtesy of a court order barring the state from disqualifying the Greens while their case for official recognition awaits a hearing in U.S. District Court. Temporary life is better than none at all, but the party — all third parties — deserve better.

The Greens ran into trouble after their presidential nominee, Ralph Nader, failed last year to receive as least 5 percent of the vote, which is the minimum required for the state to maintain a party’s official status. Parties must also receive 5 percent in the previous gubernatorial race; Green Jonathan Carter got 6.6 percent in 1994. Party officials protested that the presidential standard was unfair and harmful, that a state party should not be forced to meet a test based on the popularity of a national candidate. A bill removing that hurdle was positively received in the Legislature’s Committee on Legal and Veteran Affairs, but was killed in the final hours of the session by Democrats and Republicans who thought better of encouraging competition for their seats.

With the defeat of that bill, the Greens’ party status was in jeopardy, and though it challenged the interpretation of the law in Maine’s courts, in August the Maine Supreme Judicial Court decided that the Greens no longer qualified for official party recognition based on Mr. Nader’s poor showing. It was a fair interpretation of a lousy law. The Greens’ decision to go to federal court, raising questions about the constitutionality of this lousy law, was the right move. They eventually should meet with success.

At least they have precedents to encourage them. A 1992 ruling by the Supreme Court in a case called Norman v. Reed affirmed that, “The right of citizens to create and develop new political parties derives from the First and 14th Amendments and advances the constitutional interest of likeminded voters to gather in pursuit of common political ends, thus enlarging all voters’ opportunities to express their own political preferences. … Therefore, a state may limit a new party’s access to the ballot only to the extent that a sufficiently weighty state interest justifies the restriction. Any severe restriction must be narrowly drawn to advance state interest of compelling importance.”

There is a strong argument to be made that the state lacks an “interest of compelling importance” that requires a statewide party to produce even a minimally popular presidential candidate. Instead, what the state has is a body of lawmakers content to allow their major parties to continue without the distraction of fresh ideas and increased public involvement that new parties bring.

Maine’s history is littered with third parties — Liberty, Free-Soil, Know-Nothing and the resulting fusion in the 1850s of a group called the Republican Party. But that was before the Legislature passed the 5 percent rule on presidential elections. The Greens and other third parties deserve a similar chance to participate in the political process and ought to find support for their cause in federal court.