Tennessee Governor Bill Lee still hasn’t acted on HB 2764, the bill that requires candidates for congress to have been a resident of Tennessee for three years before running. He must either sign it, veto it, or let it become law without his signature, by Wednesday, April 13.
If he lets it become law, a pending federal lawsuit against the idea will become active. The case is Collins v State, m.d., 3:22cv-225.
According to this story, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg expects to issue an order on Monday, April 11, in Greene v Raffensperger. This is the lawsuit in which Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to stop Georgia election officials from adjudicating a challenge to her qualifications to be a congressional candidate.
In November 2020, Alaska voters passed Measure Two, which created a top-four system, and also require individuals who make independent expenditures in campaigns for state and local office to make their contributions public. On April 7, a federal lawsuit was filed against the campaign spending part of the initiative. Smith v Helzer, 3:22cv-77. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court judge Shannon Gleason, an Obama appointee. Here is the Complaint.
On April 7, Hawaii Governor David Ige signed HB 1471, which slightly eases the petitioning procedure for newly-qualifying parties. The old law has a column on the petition for the signers to show their entire birthdate. The bill deletes the “year” column, so in the future, signers will only need to show the month and date of their birthday.
This is the second ballot access improvement bill that has been signed into law this year. The first was the Oregon bill, easing the registration requirement for a party to remain ballot-qualified.
Three candidates have withdrawn from the June 2022 Alaska primary for U.S. House, special election. Therefore, there are now 48 candidates on the ballot instead of 51: 21 independents, 16 Republicans, 6 Democrats, 3 Libertarians, and one each from the Alaskan Independence Party and the American Independent Party. UPDATE: Ted S. Heintz, who had filed as a Libertarian, and who is a registered Libertarian, has exercised his option to be listed as “nonpartisan” on the ballot. Therefore, from the viewpoint of what the ballot shows, there are now 22 independents and two Libertarians in the race.
