On May 16, New Hampshire HB 588 passed the Senate Election Law Committee.  It had already passed the House.  It deletes the requirement that a presidential primary candidate must be a registered member of the party whose primary he or she is entering.

The law has never made any sense, because nineteen states don’t have registration by party.  It has never been enforced.  In 2016, a challenge was filed to Bernie Sanders’ entry into the Democratic presidential primary, but it was overruled.  Sanders lives in Vermont, a state without registration by party.

This Bloomberg story says that Congressman Richard Neal, chair of the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee, apparently doesn’t want to see President Trump’s New York state income tax returns, even if the New York legislature passes the bill that would let Neal see the state income tax returns.

The New York bill has already passed the State Senate, but not the Assembly.

On May 14, Rhonda Brown Fleming sued the Cherokee Nation in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., over whether she should be allowed on the ballot for the June 1 election for President of the Cherokee Nation.  She is a descendant of a slave.  Until 1866, the Cherokee Nation permitted slavery.

She was kept off the ballot because she is not a blood member of the tribe, but she argues that it had previously been determined that descendants of slaves held by members of the Cherokee Nation are also part of the tribe.  Here is the complaint.  The case is Brown Fleming v Cherokee Nation, 1:19cv-1397.  The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan.  She was also kept off the ballot because she does not live on the reservation.