On January 24, U.S. District Court Robert C. Chambers issued a final judgement in Daly v Warner, 3:16cv-8981, that the West Virginia January deadline for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, to file a declaration of candidacy is unconstitutional. The state is not appealing. When the legislature convenes in February, it is expected that it will pass a bill, deleting the requirement for a January declaration for petition candidates.
The only other state with a similar law is Texas. At least Texas does not apply the requirement to independent and minor party presidential candidates, whereas West Virginia does. One of the plaintiffs in the Daly case was Darrell Castle, who of course did not file a declaration of candidacy in January 2016 because at that time he was not even running for the Constitution Party nomination. And of course no one else from the Constitution Party could have filed such a declaration either, because the party did not even choose its presidential nominee until April 2016.
Perhaps the state should be mentioned earlier. I spent most of my time reading this wondering what state this was
Thank you, Jonathan. I have amended the post.
Texas has the same deadline for all non-presidential candidates.
There are no declarations for presidential candidate nomination. The presidential primary does not nominate anyone.