An anonymous source has circulated a memo claiming that the American Liberty Party takeover scheme, which involves taking over the Libertarian party, changing its name to theirs, and running a current Republican Congressman for President, will not work because state laws for the most part do not allow it. Readers familiar with the laws in their own state may choose to comment.
It is true that the vast majority of states do not allow a ballot recognized political party to change its name without doing a ballot access drive under the new name. The cost and difficulty of doing this would be very high. The Libertarian Party currently has some form of recognized status in over 30 states. The only states I can think of which allow a ballot qualified party to change its name with conducting a ballot access drive under the new name are South Carolina (where I know several years ago the American Party changed its name to the Alliance Party) and according to Richard Winger, New Mexico, where the Libertarian Party of New Mexico is disaffiliated with the Libertarian National Committee.
If we were back in 1971 I think a good case could be made that American Liberty Party or Liberty Party would have been better names than Libertarian Party, but 55 years later after lots of hard work and money spent building the Libertarian Party the party name does have some name recognition value to it. Even though American Liberty Party may be a better name, the general public will have never heard of it, so it would take a lot of work and money to build the name American Liberty Party to the same recognition level that the Libertarian Party has now.
Given this reality one has to question if the name change would be worth the hassle and the expense.
Who cares if its only considered d/b/a at best or a symbolic name change at worse?