U.S. District Court Alters Some Procedures for Wisconsin April 7 Primary

Posted on by April 2, 2020
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On April 2, U.S. District Court Judge William Conley ordered some changes in the upcoming Wisconsin primary. He did not delay the election, which is a presidential primary combined with non-partisan judicial elections. But he made some changes in voting procedures. (1) mailed absentee ballot don’t need to arrive at the election administration office until April 13; (2) the deadline for requesting an absentee postal ballot is extended til April 3; (3) absentee applicants no longer need a notarized statement explaining why they can’t vote at the polls.

Read his 53-page opinion, explaining the basis for his order, here.

No Democratic Candidates Appear to have Qualified for U.S. House in South Dakota

Posted on by April 2, 2020
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South Dakota requires candidates running in primaries for Congress to file petitions to get on a primary ballot. The primary is June 2. The petition deadline was March 31. It appears from the Secretary of State’s list of candidates that no Democrat qualified for the Democratic primary ballot for U.S. House. Democrats needed 1,615 signatures of party members. This blog post originally said there didn’t seem to be a Democrat for U.S. Senate either, but on April 2, the Secretary of State showed a Democrat had filed for that office.

Generally South Dakota Democrats running for statewide office don’t need that many signatures. The law requires a number equal to 1% of the party’s last gubernatorial vote. The Democratic nominee for Governor in 2018, Billie Sutton, did unusually well for a Democrat in South Dakota. By comparison, after the 2014 gubernatorial election, Democrats only needed 706 signatures.

The legislature adjourned March 30. At the last minute it did pass a bill delaying April municipal elections, but it does not seem to have passed any bill to alter the June primary. Thanks to Dan Fishman for alerting me to the South Dakota candidate list. South Dakota does not permit write-ins in either primaries or the general election; it is one of only four states that has never permitted any write-ins. The others are Nevada, Hawaii, and Oklahoma.

Only Three Virginia Republicans Qualify for Primary Ballot, Despite the Requirement Having Been Lowered from 10,000 to 3,500

Posted on by April 2, 2020
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Virginia holds its primaries (for office other than president) in June. Candidates for U.S. Senate needed 3,500 signatures. The law says they need 10,000, but a state court had lowered that last month to 3,500. Even though the new requirement was considerably easier than the legal requirement, and even though candidates could have been petitioning since January (before the lockdown), only three candidates had at least 3,500 valid signatures.

See this story. The candidate who filed the lawsuit that resulted in a lower requirement, Omari Faulkner, did not get on the ballot, because he had only submitted 3,769. Thanks to D.C. Sachs for the link. The story does not say how many valid signatures Faulkner had. Perhaps he would have qualified if he had asked the court to set the requirement at 3,000, instead of 3,500. Six Republicans had been trying to get on the ballot.

New York State Again Passes Restrictive Changes to Ballot Access Laws

Posted on by April 2, 2020
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On April 1, the New York legislature passed the ballot access restrictions that had been invalidated last month. They increase the vote test for qualified party status, and increase the number of signatures for statewide independent candidate petitions, and for the nominees of unqualified parties, from 15,000 to 45,000 signatures. See this story. The Governor signed the bill on April 1.

These changes had been invalidated on March 12 by a State Supreme Court, on the basis that the legislature had not passed them. Now the legislature has passed them. These changes were included in the budget bill passed on April 1.

Case law is very clear that states cannot increase the number of signatures for ballot access in the election year. The U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed Hudler v Austin, in which a Michigan law that was passed in April 1976 was invalidated (as to the 1976 election), not on the merits, but because it was being enforced for the 1976 election. 419 F.Supp. 1002, (e.d.Mi.), Aug. 18, 1976; affirmed, 430 U.S. 924 (1977).

On January 7, 2014, a U.S. District Court in Ohio said that the new petition requirements for unqualified parties passed by the legislature on November 6, 2013, could not be enforced for the 2014 election. The new petition requirements would have been 55,806 signatures, due July 2, 2014. Libertarian Party of Ohio v Husted, s.d., 2:13cv-953, 2014 wL 11515569.