New Hampshire Representatives Alvin See and Michael Moffett (both Republicans from Loudon) have introduced HB 363. It eases the declaration of candidacy deadline for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, from June, to the third Monday of July.

It also decouples the petition deadline for such candidates from the date of the non-presidential primary. The bill does not change the petition deadline much, but says it would usually be 13 weeks before the general election. Thirteen weeks works out to early August. The advantage of this is that if the legislature moves the non-presidential primary from September to an earlier date, that would not affect the independent candidate petition deadline. In 2021 the legislature passed a bill moving the September primary to an earlier date, and under the existing law, that change automatically would have moved the independent petition deadlines to an earlier month. The only reason the state hasn’t already moved the date of the September primary to an earlier date is that Governor Chris Sununu vetoed the bill.