The Nevada Secretary of State has asked the legislature to pass A81, a bill that has many proposed election law changes. The legislature doesn’t convene until February. The bill increases the filing fees. Currently, the fees for U.S. Senate are $500; for U.S. House and Governor, $300; for other statewide state offices $200; for legislature and partisan county office, $100.

The bill would require these higher fees: for U.S. Senate, $3,000; for U.S. House and Governor, $2,000; for other statewide state offices $1,500; for legislature and partisan county office, $300. The bill also says that candidates who swear they cannot afford these fees are permitted to submit a petition in lieu of filing fees, in which one signature equals one dollar, so that a poor candidate for U.S. Senate, for example, would need 3,000 signatures in lieu of paying the fee.

The bill also moves the petition deadline for a full-fledged new political party to April. If one reads the bill, the new deadline appears to be in May, but another section of the law, not being amended, says the real deadline to submit the petitions to the counties is five weeks before the deadline for putting the signatures in the hands of the Secretary of State. Thus the effective deadline would be in April. This proposal is odd, because in 1986 a U.S. District Court in Libertarian Party of Nevada v Swackhamer, 638 F.Supp. 565, that an April petition deadline for new parties is unconstitutionally early. And back then, new parties nominated by primary. Nowadays they nominate by convention, so there is even less reason for a deadline that early.