Ballot Access News

On April 13, the Oklahoma House Rules Committee completely revamped SB 602, which had already passed the Senate. The original bill moved the primary from July to June, and moved the petition deadline for new parties from May 1 to March 1.

As amended, the bill moves the primary from July to the last Tuesday in August. It also eliminates the runoff primary. It is likely that the motivation for the amendment is concern that the original bill, setting the new party petition so early, would cause the state’s procedure for new parties to get on the ballot to be held unconstitutional.

The part of the bill abolishing the runoff primary would be a dramatic change for Oklahoma, which has had runoff primaries ever since 1946. State legislators for decades have resisted the idea of a abolishing the run-off primary. But, faced with a choice between eliminating the runoff primary, or putting the state in peril of having its ballot access law declared unconstitutional, the Rules Committee made the former choice. It will be interesting to see how the full House, and the Senate, feel about abolishing the runoff. Oklahoma must do something different because the federal law, requiring that overseas absentee ballots be mailed at least 45 days before an election, makes the existing system unworkable.

One would think that because the bill moves the primary to late August, the bill would also move the deadline for a new party to get on the ballot from May 1 to May 31, but the bill does not do that. If this bill passes, it it somewhat plausible that the May 1 petition deadline would be held unconstitutional. Before 2003, Oklahoma primaries were in late August and the new party petition deadline was May 31. Because this bill proposes returning to a late August primary, one wonders why the bill doesn’t also return the petition deadline to May 31. Ever since the deadline has been May 1, no new party petition has succeeded in Oklahoma.

Like several other bills pending in the Oklahoma legislature, this bill moves the presidential primary from February to March. The date of the presidential primary has no impact on petition deadlines. Oklahoma has never required a new party to participate in a presidential primary.

The Oklahoman, the state’s largest newspaper, had editorialized on April 12 that the run-off primary should be eliminated.

On April 14, the Arizona House passed HB 2177 by a vote of 40-16. It requires the national committees of political parties to submit documents on presidential candidate eligibility, in order for that party’s presidential candidate to appear on the Arizona ballot. The bill had already passed the Senate, so it is on its way to the Governor, who is a Republican. Here is the text of the bill.

The national committee must furnish a long-form birth certificate, showing the name of the hospital in which the candidate was born. There are provisions for presidential candidates who do not have such a document, however. The bill does not impose any duties on independent presidential candidates, or write-in presidential candidates, or even the presidential nominees of parties that got on the ballot by petition that year. The national committees must also furnish documentation that its presidential nominee has lived in the United States for at least 14 years, another requirement contained in Article II of the Constitution.

The bill says nothing about vice-presidential nominees, but Arizona is one of two states that doesn’t print the names of vice-presidential nominees on the ballot anyway. The other such state is North Dakota. This year, the Arizona legislature did pass a bill to show the names of vice-presidential nominees on the general election ballot. It is HB 2335, and it passed on April 12. But despite the likelihood that future Arizona ballots will show the name of vice-presidential nominees, HB 2177 does not require any documents on eligibility for vice-presidential candidates.

Ballot Access News printed issues from 1987 are now available, at the link to past print issues on the right upper corner. Thanks to Michael Ravnitzky and Eric Garris for doing the work.