Ballot Access News

The Montana House State Administration Committee will hold a hearing on SB 194 on March 8. This is the bill, written by the Commission on Uniform State Laws, to provide that each party, and any independent presidential candidate, must submit twice as many candidates for presidential elector as that state has votes in the electoral college. Half would be designated presidential electors and half would be designated alternate presidential electors. If a presidential elector voted against his or her party’s nominee for President in the electoral college, that elector would be deemed to have resigned and the alternate would vote instead.

The Commission on Uniform State Laws also seems to have succeeded in getting this bill introduced in Indiana, Nebraska, and Washington, although none of the bills in those states have made any headway so far, except that the Nebraska bill has had a hearing. The Washington bill, HB 1950, is dead for this year.

On March 5, the Washington House passed HB 1860, which moves elections for Precinct Committee Officers from the general election to the presidential primary. Precinct Committee Officers are officers of the political parties.

The bill makes it likely, but not certain, that Washington state will continue to hold presidential primaries. The bill says a presidential primary will be held if “both” major parties tell the state no later than September 1 that they will choose all their delegates to national conventions via the presidential primary. If either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party insists on choosing some delegates by caucus, then the presidential primary is canceled for all parties.

It is interesting that the bill assumes that there will only be two qualified political parties into the indefinite future in Washington state. This assumption is because the bill refers to “both” the qualified parties. A qualified party in Washington state currently is one that polled at least 5% of the vote for President at the last presidential election.

Washington’s Secretary of State Sam Reed had proposed that the presidential primaries be eliminated, but the bills to do that did not advance.

On March 7, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed the results of its March 4 conference. For the third conference in a row, the Court considered, but did not decide, whether to hear the two cases concerning the Illinois special U.S. Senate election. The cases are Burris v Judge, 10-367, and Quinn v Judge, 10-821. Presumably the Court will next consider whether to hear these cases at its next conference, which is on March 18.