Alabama Representative Mike Ball (R-Madison) has introduced HB 214. It provides that in all partisan elections except president, all candidates would run in the primary and only the top two vote-getters could run in November. However, like two other similar bills in Alabama, it does not provide for equal procedures for candidates to get on a primary ballot. Republicans and Democrats would simply pay a fee and file with their own parties, but everyone else would need a petition of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote.
Because the primary is in March in presidential years, this would mean candidates who aren’t Republicans or Democrats would need to submit a petition of approximately 13,000 valid signatures by December of the year before the election. This would be unconstitutional under New Alliance Party of Alabama v Hand, 933 F 2d 1568 (11th circuit, 1991). That decision, which also concerned a petition of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote, struck down a March petition deadline as too early, so obviously December of the year before the election would be even more unacceptable. Thanks to Shawn Griffiths for the news about HB 214.
Top 2 infection spreads.
More UN-Equal stuff spreads.
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NO primaries.
PR and AppV
This may simply be a drafting oversight. Half of the bill is changes to the Ethics Code, such as removing references to “candidate” as being a candidate in a primary runoff, since there would no longer be a runoff. But there were also deletions of obsolete or transitional code. A statute might read “after 2014, the following will apply …”. Since it is now after 2014, that introductory language can be removed. A legislative drafting staff would see that, an individual legislator who is providing a suggestion would not. He might give general instructions like get rid of the primary runoff. As in Louisiana, the “general election” was actually a replacement for the formerly decisive “primary runoff”. Edwin Edwards had won a hard fought primary and runoff, and then had to face a Republican opponent, even though only a few thousand had voted in the Republican Primary (there were 111 times as many votes in the Democratic Primary, and the Republican nominee David Treen would have finished tenth in the Democratic Primary).
HB 214 keeps the existing language for qualifying for a “primary”, and then grabbed the existing language for an independent from the general election and stuck it before the primary.