On March 5, the Oklahoma Senate defeated SB 275 by a vote of 23 “yes” to 22 “no”. The Senate has 48 members, and bills need 25 votes to pass. The bill would have moved the deadline for candidates to file for the (non-presidential) June primary, from the 2nd Wednesday in April, to the 2nd Monday in January. The bill would have made the same deadline change for non-presidential independent candidates.
Because the deadline for petitions for newly-qualifying parties is March 1, the bill said that candidates of a newly-qualifying party would be exempt from the January deadline, and would have filed in April.
Again (and again) — each election is NEW – going back to the FIRST election after Adam and Eve had lots of kids and such kids had more and more kids.
Wow. Can’t believe that I missed this one. Pretty stupid. At least there were some safeguards for new parties, but they were not enough.
For instance, what if you are not sure if your party is going to qualify. You are left with the conundrum of do I file in January as an Independent and be stuck with that label, or do I wait to see if my party qualifies and risk not being able to run at all if it doesn’t.
Not a good position to be in.