On March 1, the Idaho Senate passed SB 1110 by 26-9. It changes the petition requirements for statewide initiatives. Currently they need the signatures of 6% of the last vote cast in eighteen of the state’s thirty-five legislative districts. The bill changes this so that the petition would need 6% in all thirty-five districts.

All seven of the Senate’s Democrats voted “no”. In addition, two Republican Senators, Daniel Johnson and Jim Woodward, voted “no.” The bill appears to violate the Idaho Constitution, which has language protecting the initiative process. It is virtually impossible to qualify any petition when it must have a substantial number of signatures from every unit of the state. If the subject matter of the initiative had vast popular appeal in the overwhelming majority of parts of the state, but it was unpopular in just a small segment of that state, it could not get on the ballot. There is no state that has ever required any type of petition to get a large number of signatures in every legislative district.

On March 3, the Arkansas Senate passed HB 1338 by a vote of 29-3. It raises the number of signatures for independent presidential candidates, and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties, from 1,000 signatures to 5,000.

The only three “no” votes were cast by Senators Joyce Elliott, Jim Hendren, and Clarke Tucker. Hendren is a Republican; the other two are Democrats.

On March 2, Dan Whitfield filed this supplemental brief in his ballot access case, Whitfield v Thurston, 20-2309. The issue is whether Arkansas should have permitted petitioning relief in 2020 for independent non-presidential candidates, who were forced to circulate their petitions during the months of February, March, and April. The health crisis could not have been predicted, and social distancing rules began in March 2020. Whitfield needed 10,000 signatures, because he was running for U.S. Senate.

The supplemental brief was requested by the judges, and concerns mootness. Here is the state’s brief, which argues that the case is moot. The state’s brief quotes a Seventh Circuit opinion, Krislov v Yarbrough, issued February 22, 2021, which says that that Illinois ballot access case is moot because the plaintiff-candidate doesn’t intend to run in future elections. But the Seventh Circuit opinion on mootness is wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court said in Moore v Ogilvie, in 1969, that a constitutional ballot access isn’t moot once the election is over, even if the candidate-plaintiff does not intend to run in future elections. This is mentioned in a separate 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case, Richardson v Ramirez, 418 US 24, that neither brief mentions. See page 35 of Richardson v Ramirez, which says, “the particular candidacy was not apt to be revived in a future election.”