(Updated to include comment from national No Labels Group)
A group organizing a third-party presidential ticket that could bring together a moderate Republican and Democrat has failed in its effort to create a new political party in Kansas.
Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s office notified the state chair of No Labels Kansas – Glenda Reynolds of Whitewater – that the petition was not legally sufficient.
Reynolds, who unsuccessfully ran for the Kansas House as a Democrat in 2010 and 2012, said she was not aware the petition had been denied.
“That’s too bad,” Reynolds said. “I’ll have to check on that.”
State law required the petition to be submitted to the secretary of state’s office within 180 days of the first signature on the petition.
Multiple signatures on the petition were made prior to 180 days of Sept 1, the day the petition was submitted to the secretary of state.
As a result, the petition was deemed null and void.
No Labels national chief strategist Ryan Clancy said his group believes the secretary of state’s office made a mistake.
“It is impossible for signatures to have been legitimately dated more than 180 days prior to the submission of the petition because we did not begin collecting signatures until the first week of April — well within the 180-day limit,” Clancy said in a statement.
“There is no basis for rejecting the petition if certain voters wrote the wrong date or wrote in handwriting that the secretary of state’s office misconstrued,” he said.
Kansas law, he said, is clear that the petition must be liberally construed, and it appears that did not occur in this case.
“We will now appeal this decision through the proper channels.”
The movement needed 20,180 signatures to be recognized as a political party in Kansas along with the Democrats, Republicans and the Libertarians.
Nationally, the movement has stirred anxiety among Democrats who fear that it could draw votes away from President Joe Biden and help former President Donald Trump or a similar type of Republican candidate.
Getting recognized as an official party in Kansas would have made it easier for No Labels to get a candidate on the ballot for any political office from president on down.
As of Aug. 14, No Labels said it had won ballot access in 10 states after the North Carolina Board of Elections approved a new No Labels party in the state.
The movement says it has been approved to get candidates on the ballot in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah.
This is not the first time No Labels has run into problems creating a party.
Last May, the Maine secretary of state warned No Labels not to misrepresent its intentions to prospective voters.
The Portland Press-Herald reported that Shenna Bellows sent a cease-and-desist to a No Labels operative expressing concerns that the group was confusing voters who thought they were signing a petition but actually signed up to join a new political party.
“Voters have the freedom to associate with the political party of their choice, or no party at all,” Bellows said in a statement
“We were concerned after hearing reports of dozens of voters alleging they were unaware they had been enrolled in the No Labels Party and are working to ensure every voter understands their rights.”
The agency sent voters listed as being enrolled in the No Labels Party a letter informing them of their voting status.
Voters who wanted to remain enrolled in the No Labels Party did not need to do anything.
Voters wishing to change their enrollment status had to fill out a new voter registration card.
Kansas election officials said that can’t happen here because the political party has to be established before anyone can change their registration to join No Labels.
Reynolds said her interest in the No Labels effort arose from when she ran for the Legislature and found that voters dismissed her candidacy because she was a Democrat.
When Reynolds ran for office in 2012 she left her party affiliation off her campaign material because she was getting feedback from voters who wouldn’t vote for a Democrat.
“I left my party affiliation off because I wanted people to read about me before they made a decision whether to vote for me or not,” Reynolds said in an interview.
“I thought: What would happen if there weren’t any labels by our names?” she said.
“I really thought that was the way things should be. You voted for the best person, not the party affiliation,” she said.
She later attended a national No Labels conference in Washington, D.C., in 2017 and kept in touch with the group afterward and has participated in remote meetings since.
Reynold said the national group sent people to Kansas to collect signatures.
Nationally, Democrats have been nervous about the emergence of a third-party bipartisan ticket that potentially could draw votes away from Biden.
But a poll by Monmouth University suggests that the fallout from a so-called fusion ticket of a Republican and Democrat in 2024 is difficult to measure.
The survey of 910 adults found that about 30% would support a generic third party fusion ticket made up of a Democrat and a Republican.
Five percent said they would definitely vote for the third-party option if Biden and Trump were the major party nominees, and another 25% say they would probably vote third party.
Meanwhile, 31% say they definitely would not support a fusion ticket and 34% probably would not.
The survey found that support for a third-party ticket drops lower when names of possible candidates are added to the question such as U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and former Utah Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman.
Monnmouth measured Manchin and Huntsman as an alternative ticket to a Biden-Trump campaign.
The poll found that 2% of voters would definitely vote for that third-party option and 14% would probably vote for the fusion ticket.
The survey also found that 44% definitely would not vote for a Manchin-Huntsman ticket and 31% probably would not.
