On January 29, the Utah Senate passed SB 107, which moves the petition deadline for independent candidates from January to June 15. On February 12, it passed the House Rules Committee.
As far as is known, this is the first bill to ease ballot access restrictions that has made any headway so far this year. The bill is a result of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s federal lawsuit.
The sponsoring senator, Mr. Weiler, explained that the January deadline for independents was an accident. There was some issues with the procedure for partisan candidates, so the deadline was moved from March to January, but it ended up affecting independent hopefuls, too. He says he had the bill to fix this problem months before RFK Jr. sued.
Not wanting to fight a losing battle, the state settled with RFK Jr. The senator was happy, because now he could fix the problem, instead of some judge mandating a solution. It sounded like a sore-loser policy is still in effect. There was basically no discussion, and it passed the senate without a single vote against.
All of this, I learned from watching the recording of the senate proceedings. The videos were only a few minutes total. Utah has it set up so you can just click and jump right into the part of the recording you’re looking for. I hope all states have that setup!
Thank God for RFK Jr and Donald Trump Jr!