On June 20, the New York legislature passed A8228/S6532. It eases the deadline for registered voters to switch parties. Current law says they can’t vote in the 2020 primaries if they hadn’t joined the party by October 2019. The bill changes that deadline to February 14, 2020. The presidential primary is in April and the primary for other office is June; the February 14 deadline would apply to both primaries.

For a reason not understood by me, the legislature has never sent that bill to the Governor. Perhaps some commentator can shed some light on why.

On September 19, Chris Graveline filed this brief in U.S. District Court in Michigan, in his ballot access lawsuit. He was an independent candidate for Michigan Attorney General in 2018. He sued to overturn the requirement that he submit 30,000 valid signatures. The U.S. District Court enjoined the law, partly because no one had successfully completed the statewide independent petition in Michigan since 2004. Now the case is in the phase in which the courts will determine if the requirement is unconstitutional.

On September 19, U.S. District Court Judge Morrison England issued an injunction against California’s new law that requires presidential primary candidates to reveal their income tax returns. See this story. Two presidential candidates had filed lawsuits against the law, President Trump and Rocky De La Fuente, De La Fuente was in the courtroom so naturally afterwards he spoke to the reporter who wrote the story.

UPDATE: see this story, which has a quote from the bill’s author, State Senator Mike McGuire. He says the judge’s action is “perplexing.”