On September 22, the California legislature forwarded SB 568 to Governor Jerry Brown. He has two weeks to act on the bill. It moves the primary in all years from June to early March.

Election law professor Derek Muller wrote this commentary about the bill on September 21. Muller is critical of having the primary for congress and partisan state office in March, and labels it an “incumbent protection bill.” But further down in his column, he also makes the point that a system in which it is impossible for anyone to get on the November ballot, unless they act by December of the year before the election, may be unconstitutional. Although Illinois and Texas also have March primaries for all office, at least they allow for petitioning for minor party and independent candidates to get on the ballot after the primary is over.

Currently, at least until or unless Brown signs the bill, there is no state in which all routes to the November ballot are blocked, unless the candidate takes action in the year before the election. Arkansas briefly had a system like that, but the courts and the legislature overturned that aspect of the system.