As already noted, on April 26, 2017, the Eighth Circuit ruled that Arkansas’ March petition deadline for non-presidential independents is unconstitutional unless the state can prove that it needs the deadline to be that early, to have enough time to check the petitions for validity. Moore v Martin, 15-3558.
On July 3, attorneys for the state asked the Eighth Circuit to stay that decision, while it prepared a request to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the state’s objections to that decision. But on July 11, the Eighth Circuit refused the state’s request. The state is still free to ask for U.S. Supreme Court review, but in the meantime, if it intends to try to prove that the March deadline is absolutely necesssary to give it enough time to check petition validity, it must start to marshall that evidence. That would be difficult to do, given that Arkansas has an August deadline for independent presidential petition deadlines, and presidential petitions for parties that just want to be on for president, and the state seems to have no trouble checking those petitions in time for the November election.
How come California, Louisiana, Nebraska (legislative), and Washington don’t have this problem?
If they need that much time to check signatures, that would be a sign that they need to require a more reasonable number of signatures.
No more extremist robot party hack caucuses, primaries and conventions.
ONE election day.
Every election is N-E-W — i.e. equal ballot access via nominating petitions / filing fees (based on min. number of signatures).
Adoption of the all write-in ballot (no pre-printed candidate or party names) similar to federal form 186 for overseas voters – the Federal Absentee Write-in ballot – would remove excuses for petitions, filing fees and party ballot retention quotas and endless litigation on which censorship rules are constitutional and which are not.
How many voters (with bad writing) would take the time and effort to fill in write-ins in LONG ballots having lots of offices — along with ballot questions ???