Normally, Pennsylvania candidates seeking a spot on a primary ballot must petition inside a 3-week window. This year, the State Elections office wants to cut that period to just two weeks. Yet the office doesn’t recommend that the number of signatures be any less. See this story.
In Pennsylvania, only parties with at least 15% registration membership are entitled to have primaries, so this problem only affects Republicana and Democrats.
On February 14, Texas filed a notice of appeal in Longoria v Paxton. This is the lawsuit in which a U.S. District Court had enjoined the law that makes it a crime for an election official to suggest to a voter that the voter consider applying for a postal ballot.
On February 15, the Tennessee Senate State & Local Government passed SB 2616 by a vote of 5-1. It says that political parties cannot nominate anyone for either house of congress, if that person had not voted in Tennessee in each of the last three statewide general elections. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
On February 15, proponents of an Illinois statewide initiative filed a lawsuit in state court, to obtain the ability to collect electronic signatures. Wagner v White, Circuit Court of Cook County, 22CH285. Here is the Complaint.
On February 15, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued a lengthy opinion in Harper v Hall, 2022-NCSC-17, explaining why it had ruled on February 4 that the new U.S. House and legislative district boundaries constitute an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The majority opinion is 138 pages; the dissent is 74 pages. The vote, like the vote on February 4, is four-three. Here is the opinion. The majority is very eloquent about the harm done by partisan gerrymandering, and sets forth a prominent role for the State Constitutional provision that elections shall be “free and equal.”
The opinion may be useful in the near future when any independent candidate challenges the ballot access laws for independents. Those laws are very harsh. No independent candidate for either house of Congress has ever appeared on a government-printed ballot in North Carolina.
