Arizona bills SB 1425 and HB 2022 are almost certain to pass the legislature. The House passed it unanimously on February 2 and the Senate Judiciary Committee passed it unanimously on February 4. They move the non-presidential primary from the first Tuesday in August to the next to last Tuesday in July. The bill takes effect this year. Because candidates are already circulating petitions, the bills say that petitions are not invalid just because they say that this year’s primary is August 4 (under the bills, the primary will be July 21). UPDATE: the Senate passed the bill on February 5.

Assuming the bills become law, the deadline for a petition to create a new party moves from late November to mid-November of the odd year before the election year, a deadline that is almost certainly unconstitutional. No other state except Utah has a deadline to create a new party that is in the odd year before the election year.

The Oklahoma initiative petition for a top-two system is being checked for validity. The Secretary of State, not the State Elections Board, checks initiative petitions. The Secretary of State’s office estimates we won’t know for at least five more weeks whether I-836 has enough valid signatures. Oklahoma does not use random sampling for petition validity. Instead, every signatures is checked.

On February 5, the Oregon House Rules Committee is hearing testimony on HJR 201, a proposed Constitutional amendment that would provide for a top-two primary, with the proviso that parties that do not wish to participate could still place their nominees on the November ballot as well, and independent candidates could still petition onto the November ballot.

The bill would not permit a candidate in the top-two primary to list a party label unless the candidate were endorsed by that party. Here is the text. The lead sponsor is Representative Cyrus Javadi (D-Tillamook). He had been elected as a Republican but had then switched to being a Democrat. The bill has ten other sponsors also.

The bill’s supporters biggest point is that independent voters are 37% of the registered voters and ought to be allowed to vote in primaries. One wonders why they don’t simply support a bill that says independents can vote in any party’s primary, as other western states New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona have done. Or they could support a classic open primary, in which the voter registration form doesn’t ask the voter to choose a party, and in which any voter is free to vote in any party’s primary.