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.

On April 15, a New Mexico state trial court rejected a challenge to the ballot position of Chris Manning, Libertarian nominee for U.S. House, special election of June 1. See this story. The challenger says there will be an appeal.

Only two states do not use the term “Supreme Court” for their highest state court, Maryland and New York. Both call their highest state court the “Court of Appeals.” The Maryland legislature recently passed a bill providing that the voters will be asked to amend the state constitution and call their highest state court the “State Supreme Court.” If it passes, that will leave New York alone in terminology for that state’s highest state court. Thanks to Ballotpedia for this news.