Several interesting Arizona bills concerning elections have been introduced.

HB 2314, by Representative John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills), would allow election officials to omit the names of presidential elector candidates from general election ballots. Arizona is the most populous state that still prints the names of presidential elector candidates on ballots.

SB 1203, by four Democratic legislators, would require the presidential nominees of political parties to submit their income tax returns for the last five years, or forfeit ballot access. The bill does not include independent presidential candidates. A somewhat similar California law was declared unconstitutional last year in U.S. District Court.

HB 2181, also by Rep. Kavanagh, would move the deadline for filing as a write-in candidate from 40 days before the election, to 76 days before. It would also require write-in candidates to have lived in the jurisdiction for at least 120 days before filing. As applied to congress, this would be unconstitutional.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has this useful chart showing when each state’s legislature convenes in 2021. People who care about ballot access in their own state should be now seeking legislators willing to introduce bills to improve the ballot access laws, especially in states like Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, all states with major ballot access problems. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.

Last year, the Democratic Party sued Arizona over its law that determines the order of candidates on the November ballot. The law says the party that won the gubernatorial vote should have all its nominees listed first, within any particular county. Because the Republicans won the 2018 gubernatorial election in almost all of Arizona’s counties, Republicans were listed first in 2020, and will again be listed in 2022, in almost all counties, unless the law is changed.

In the Ninth Circuit, the case is Mecinas v Hobbs, 20-0249. The Democrats failed to get injunctive relief in 2020. The U.S. District Court said that laws on the order of candidates on the ballot cannot be heard in federal court, because “fair” ballot order is inherently ambiguous. That is an absurd conclusion. Obviously a law that provides for random decisions about order of candidates is fair. Another fair method is rotation of names from one geographical unit to the next.

The opening brief is due in the Ninth Circuit on March 18, 2021.