On March 27, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed HB 214. It repeals the ban on out-of-state circulators.
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Due to a difficult primary petition requirement in South Dakota this year, no Democrat qualified to run for the state’s sole U.S. House seat. This is the first time since 1930 that the Democrats have not had a full slate of nominees for that office. In 1930, when the state had three districts, Democrats had no nominee in one of the three seats.
It is likely that there will be a Libertarian nominee for U.S. House this year. The Libertarian Party is ballot-qualified and nominates by convention. It is also conceivable another new or minor party might get on the ballot in nominate for that office.
On April 2, the Michigan State Appeals Court ordered the Secretary of State to check the signatures on a statewide initiative, even though the petition had the wrong election date. The court said there is no statutory requirement that initiative petitions have the election date, so the petition error could not be used to disqualify it. The initiative proposes that fracking be banned. Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan v Secretary of state, 350161. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
On April 5, Lincoln Chafee withdrew as a candidate for the Libertarian Party nomination. See this story. Thanks to Eric Garris for the link.
Wisconsin is holding its judicial non-partisan elections on April 7, along with Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. On April 4 the Republican National Committee asked the U.S. Supreme Court to disallow a ruling of the lower federal courts, permitting absentee mail ballots to count if they arrive in election administration offices by April 13. The Republican National Committee wants all such ballots to be invalidated unless they have a postmark of April 7 or earlier. Here is the filing. Republican National Committee v Democratic National Committee, 19A1016.
UPDATE: the Democratic response is here.
UPDATE: here is the Republican reply brief.