Redistricting lawsuit cost Georgia Libertarians their most reliable race and 30 years of ballot access

Georgia’s Libertarian Party lost more than 30 years of automatic statewide ballot access when a race for an obscure board was canceled twice after a legal challenge to districts that a court found unfair.

Colin McKinney said the path forward for the Libertarian Party won’t be petitioning but legislative reform. McKinney had qualified to run as District 2 seat on the Public Service Commission in 2022 and has since run as the Libertarian nominee for Insurance Commissioner. The problem of getting parties and candidates onto the ballot isn’t a problem shared evenly.

“The Republicans and the Democrats were grandfathered into ballot access. They've never had to submit petitions and they never will,” told us in a recent interview.

The one reliable race, canceled twice

McKinney qualified as the Libertarian candidate for PSC District 2 in 2022, paying more than $1,000 out of pocket in registration fees and building a campaign before the seat was scheduled to appear on a ballot.

Georgia's PSC is elected under an unusual hybrid system: The state is divided into five districts, and a candidate must live in the district they represent, yet every voter statewide gets to cast a ballot for every district's seat. 

A federal lawsuit filed in 2020 argued that this at-large method dilutes the voting power of Black Georgians, since districts drawn with higher Black populations are effectively decided by the statewide electorate rather than the district's own voters, in violation of the Voting Rights Act. 

A judge sided with the challenge and blocked PSC elections from moving forward. The district court blocked the 2022 elections, and although an appeals court reversed that decision in November 2023, the races remained off the ballot in 2024 while further litigation continued.

“While it was under litigation, they decided not to have an election at all,”

McKinney said.

Public Service Commission has been Georgia Libertarians' one reliable race. Libertarian PSC candidates have routinely cleared the 1 percent of all registered voters that the party needed to stay ballot-qualified, regularly landing above 2 percent, with some — John Monds, Eric Hoskins, David Staples — topping 30 percent outright.

Most voters don't follow utility regulation closely, and it’s a race where strong party loyalty doesn’t necessarily carry over, unlike races perceived as high stakes like governor or president. Voters willing to split their tickets often back third-party candidates — they don’t see these votes as high-risk. 

That's the race Georgia canceled twice.

Why the top of the ticket couldn't save it

With PSC off the ballot in both 2022 and 2024, president was the only statewide race left to carry that weight in 2024.

It wasn't enough. 

Top-of-the-ticket races routinely underperform down-ballot ones for third parties, and 2024 was about as locked-in as it gets: A razor-thin national contest between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump left little room for a third-party candidates.

“Everyone decided that they were going to vote either Republican or Democrat and didn't give us an opportunity,” McKinney said. “If we had had some other races, we might have been able to maintain that ballot access, but we did not.”

Three decades of ballot access disappeared in one cycle.

The aftermath

To regain ballot access, the state required the party to collect 75,286 valid signatures in 14-15 months to get 1 percent of registered voters — unlike other states, the number comes from registered voters, not those who turned out to vote.

For comparison, Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta seats 71,000, which would still fall more than 4,000 signatures short even if it was a sellout and every attendee could offer a qualifying signature. 

Signature drives aim for 20-40 percent more than the goal, or 90,000-105,000 signatures, to make up for signatures that get disqualified.

“You may as well have asked for 10 million,” McKinney said.

Volunteers worked car shows, farmers markets, Pride events, fall festivals, and other events across the state, but the process — five to seven minutes per signature, with county-specific paperwork — yielded only 100 to 150 signatures per full day of effort, even with multiple volunteers.

“We didn't even come close,” McKinney said. “Not even close.”

Ballots Without Barriers advocates for eased ballot-access laws so voters have more choices, and candidates have fewer expensive and onerous obstacles to get onto ballots across the country. It is a project of Voter Choice Foundation, a 501(c)(4).