The Arizona legislature adjourned for the year on the evening of May 3. The session did not pass the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill, HB 2379. That bill had many provisions. One of them would have increased the difficulty for a candidate to get on a presidential primary ballot.

Existing law lets anyone qualify, with no fee and no petition, if the candidate has a campaign office. The law would have required candidates to either submit 1,000 signatures, or demonstrate that the candidate was already on the presidential primary ballot in at least 20 other states, or had already qualified for primary season matching funds. The latter two choices are not realistic because Arizona has one of the five earliest presidential primaries in the nation, and filing for the Arizona presidential primary closes too early for candidates to have realistically accomplished either of the last two alternative ways for qualifying.