On April 20, a U.S. District Court issued an opinion in Arsenault v Way, 3:16cv-1854, striking down the New Jersey residence requirement for petitioners who wish to circulate petitions for candidates running in primaries. Here is the 21-page decision. The case had been filed in 2016 when Rocky De La Fuente was running in Democratic presidential primaries. He needed 1,000 signatures of registered Democrats in order to get on the New Jersey Democratic presidential primary. He did not get on that ballot; the only candidates who appeared on that ballot were Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Originally the U.S. District Court had upheld the restriction, but then the Third Circuit had remanded it and said the lower court should have used the strict scrutiny test. Under that test, the law cannot survive unless the state can show that it has a compelling need for the restriction. The state tried to argue that the Democratic and Republican Parties would be harmed without the restriction, but the two major parties themselves never intervened in the case and the state produced no evidence that the parties would be harmed.

On April 20, the California Senate Judiciary Committee passed SB 660, which makes it illegal for initiative proponents to pay circulators on a per-signature basis. Now it goes to the State Senate.

Each of the three last Governors of California vetoed bills like this bill.

On April 14, the Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments in a case filed by a voter, who argues that the entire statewide initiative process is invalid. It was passed in 1992 when Mississippi had five U.S. House districts. Unfortunately, the law said initiatives need signatures from all five districts. But Mississippi lost a U.S. House seat after the 2000 census, and the law has never been repaired. See this story.