WYOMING ALMOST CERTAIN TO SEVERELY INJURE BALLOT ACCESS

On February 19, the Wyoming Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee passed HB 173.  It had already passed the House, so is extremely likely to become law.  The vote in committee was 4-1.  The bill raises the number of signatures for a statewide independent from 2% of the last vote for U.S. House, to 3%.  For legislative candidates, the bill raises it from 2% to 5%.

Furthermore, it moves the petition deadline for independent petitions from August to June; and it requires independents to file a declaration of candidacy in May.

The irony is that the law was already very severe.  Wyoming was one of only four states that had fewer than four presidential candidates on the ballot last year.  The state had no independent candidates on the ballot for any statewide race, and only one independent candidate for the legislature on the ballot, out of 75 races.

The bill also says that no one may be an independent candidate, unless he or she is a registered independent.  No exception is made for presidential candidates.  No state now has any law requiring an independent presidential candidate to be a registered independent.  When states have had such laws, they have been defeated in court.

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Here is a story on Trump’s Executive Order.

Here is Rick Hasen’s preliminary analysis of that Executive Order.

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States denied Petition for Certiorari in the Indiana and Texas ballot access cases. The Indiana case was Indiana Green Party, et al. v. Morales and the Texas case was Miller, et al. v. Nelson.