New Mexico law provides for a government committee to decide which presidential primary candidates should appear automatically on presidential primary ballots. The law says they should pick candidates who are “generally advocated and nationally recognized as candidates”. The committee consists of the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, the state chair of each party entitled to a primary, and if the party has legislators, the leaders of that party’s legislative delegation in each house. Candidates not chosen may still petition to get on the ballot, but the petition is very difficult.

On February 11, the committee made these choices for each of the three parties entitled to a primary: Democrats Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang.

For the Republican ballot, the committee only chose President Donald Trump.

For the Libertarian ballot, the committee chose 13 names: Max Abramson, Sorinne Ardeleanu, Ken Armstrong, Dan Behrman, Lincoln Chafee, Jacob Hornberger, Jo Jorgensen, Adam Kokesh, John Monds, James Ogle, Sam Robb, Arvin Vohra, and Mark Whitney.

William Weld is represented by a New Mexico attorney, and Weld’s attorney has objected to the rejection of Weld’s name. Thanks to Rick Lass for this news.

On February 19, the Eleventh Circuit issued a nine-page opinion in Democratic Executive Committee of Florida v National Republican Senatorial Committee, 18-14758. It ruled against the Republican Committee.

The issue was procedural. The case had been filed in 2018 against a Florida law that said if a provisional ballot is rejected because the signature on the outer envelope of the ballot doesn’t appear to resemble the signature on that voter’s registration form, the ballot should be invalidated. The voter had no means to contest the ruling invalidating the ballot. The U.S. District Court had enjoined that law, and said the voter must be given a chance to show the signature is his or hers. That was appealed in late 2018, but the Eleventh Circuit refused to disturb the injunction.

In 2019, the legislature passed a bill fixing the problem, and all sides agreed that the case became moot. But the Republican group wanted the earlier Eleventh Circuit decision erased (“vacated”). But the new ruling says the court will not erase the earlier ruling. The three judges in the new ruling are Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee; and two Trump appointees, Kevin Newsom and Britt Grant.

On February 19, the Alaska Supreme Court heard arguments in Meyer v Alaskans for Better Elections, S17629. The issue is whether the initiative for a top-four system violates the state constitutional provision that initiatives must deal with a single subject.

The top-four initiative includes a plan to abolish party nominees. Instead, all candidates for congress and state office would run in the August primary, and then only the top four vote-getters would be on the general election ballot.

The initiative also says that the November ballot (but not the primary) should use ranked choice voting.

Finally, it says that campaign contributions must be reported within 24 hours of the receipt of the contribution.

The state elections office believes the initiative is invalid because campaign finance is a different subject that abolishing party nominees. See this story about the hearing.