The South Jersey Times published an editorial on April 13, deploring the fact that so many candidates are being challenged off primary ballots in New Jersey this year. New Jersey elects is Governor and most of its legislators this year. See the editorial here. It also criticizes New Jersey ballot design.
The South Jersey Times is a daily print newspaper covering all counties in the southern end of New Jersey.
An Ipsos poll shows that 63% of Americans want to end lifetime tenure for U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and only 22% are opposed to the idea. The other 15% did not an express an opinion. See this story. Thanks to HowAppealing for the link.
As already reported, on March 29, 2021, two important ballot access cases were won in federal court, in Michigan and Georgia. In Illinois and Maine, there are pending ballot access cases in U.S. District Court; and in Arkansas, there is one in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Attorneys for the plaintiffs in Arkansas, Illinois, and Maine promptly informed the judges in those states about the Georgia and Michigan decisions. So far, attorneys for state governments in Arkansas, Illinois and Maine have not filed their own briefs commenting on these new precedents, even though court rules permit them to do so.
The Arkansas, Illinois, and Maine decisions could come out at any time. The Illinois case, filed in 2016, challenges the 5% petitions for independent candidates for U.S. House. The Maine case, filed in 2019 by the Libertarian Party, challenges several ballot access laws relating to new or small parties. The Arkansas case, filed in 2019, challenges the procedures for non-presidential independent candidates.
On April 13, Arkansas State Senator Trent Garner (R-El Dorado) introduced SB 684. It eliminates the ability of parties that nominate by primary to set their candidate filing fees. Instead a state law would dictate the amount of fees, which would be considerably higher than the fees now set by the Democratic Party. U.S. Senate and Governor would be $12,000; U.S. House would be $10,000; State Senate would be $4,500; State House would be $3,000.
This would probably result in even fewer candidates on the ballot. Already over half of all Arkansas state legislative races already have only one candidate on the ballot. Also, if the bill is signed into law, there would probably be many more instances of candidates declaring themselves “paupers”, which enables them to avoid fees, but is bad public relations.
In 2012, Senator Garner was the author of the bill that indirectly moved the petition deadline for new party petitions to November of the year before the election, and deadline that still exists. Thanks to Mark Moore for the news about the bill.
New Jersey requires primary candidates for statewide office to submit 1,000 signatures of party members. According to this story, two of the three Democrats who filed for Governor in the June 8, 2021 primary have been challenged off the ballot.
