On September 30, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed HB 373, the bill that moves the non-presidential primary from May to March, and moves the presidential primary from February to March.
As a result, candidates for partisan office (other than President) in the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian Parties have a December 1 deadline to pay their filing fees and file a declaration of candidacy for a party primary. Thanks to FrontloadingHQ for this news.
I see one constitutional issue with this change. State election law says that a candidate must have been registered with the party for at least 90 days before filing. That means that this law has a retroactive effect back to the beginning of September. I would think that it would be vulnerable to a lawsuit on the basis of ex post facto.
The bill’s author noticed that problem, and relaxed it to 75 days, for 2016 only.
To clarify and correct errors. The filing period for NC’s 2016 elections is noon, Dec. 1, 2015 to noon, Dec. 21, 2015. (There is no Dec. 1 deadline.) It has been moved up two months, because all the primaries are on March 15 now. Unaffiliated voters who want to run in a partisan primary have until 75 days before the file to change their party registration. The latest date they can do that is Oct. 7.
This bill originally was written by Republicans for the self-serving purpose of moving up their presidential primary to March so as to have more of an impact on the GOP nomination.
The Libertarian Party will participate in the presidential primary.