Get this party started
Get this party started right now
This has turned into a series:
- Party Time: The U.S. Needs An Opposition Party
- Party Time: How To Be An Opposition Party
- Party Time: The Best Time To Start An Opposition Party Was Years Ago
This time, it’s going to get practical.
I know, right?
I’m only going to talk about California, because that’s where I live, but you should be able to do the same research about how to start a political party in your own state online.
The California Secretary of State’s office has a page specifically about how to start a new political party here.
They call it “qualifying” a political party, presumably because any group is welcome to call itself a political party but to formally participate in elections you have to meet a few criteria.
The process they describe is actually pretty simple:
- hold a meeting
- choose officers
- tell the State that you exist
- prove a minimum level of support
Presumably they have a form to fill out to complete the “file a formal notice with the Secretary of State” step, although they don’t link to one, but on the whole it looks like a pretty simple process.
But that last point is obviously going to be the hard part.
There are two paths to proving that you have the minimum level of support:
- getting voters to register
- getting voters to sign a petition
(In California, you don’t register as a member of a political party; you “disclose a preference” for a political party on your voter registration.)
In order to qualify, a party needs one of these:
- .33% of voters registered as preferring that party (which at the last report was a bit over 76k voters)
- a number of signatures greater than 10% of the votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election (which is currently a bit over 1.1m voters)
So: convince 77k people to change their voter registration or 1.1m people to sign a petition.
That’s a lot.
Especially the signature option; you’re not going to manage that without paying one of the companies that specializes in signature gathering for political causes.
But 77k is not so bad, though it’s important to remember that it takes way more steps to change a voter registration than it does to sign a form outside the grocery store.
But, you’re not winning any elections here with fewer than 77k supporters anyway, so convincing folks to change their registrations is probably the way to go. After all, more than 77k people show up for the “No Kings” rallies so showing up at those with a stack of registration cards might just be enough to pull it off.
On the whole, that actually looks doable.
Which frankly surprises me; I figured the two main parties would have fenced off access more effectively than that.
Hmm.
