On July 8, the California Assembly passed SB 505. It requires presidential primary candidates to file if they want to be on a California presidential primary, and to fulfill certain fairly easy requirements. Here is the text of the bill.
Although the bill already passed the State Senate, it must return there, because the version of the bill that passed the Senate was somewhat different than the version that passed the Assembly.
Ballotpedia has an updated list of the number of state legislators in each party, including the number of independent and minor party legislators. There are 35 legislators who are not Democrats or Republicans. See here. Thanks to Mike Drucker for the link.
On July 9, Rocky De La Fuente asked a U.S. District Magistrate to suspend his opinion in De La Fuente v Hobbs, until the Ninth Circuit issues its decision in De La Fuente v Padilla. On June 11, 2019, the U.S. District Magistrate in Arizona had upheld the Arizona independent presidential petition requirement of approximately 37,000 signatures. Except for Ralph Nader in 2008, no one had used the Arizona statewide independent procedure since 1992.
Meanwhile, the Ninth Circuit had heard oral argument in De La Fuente v Padilla on March 12, and still hasn’t issued its opinion. This is the California case against the independent presidential petition. Both Arizona and California are in the Ninth Circuit, so whatever the Ninth Circuit says about the California petition is likely to be pertinent to the Arizona petition. Here is the Arizona filing of July 9, 2019.
Joe Mathews has this commentary on Fox & Hounds, pointing out that the California bill on presidential tax returns violates the California Constitution.
The Ohio legislature has amended the budget bill to move the primary for all office, in presidential years, from the second Tuesday in March, to the third Tuesday in March. Thanks to Political Wire for this news. If the bill becomes law, there will be no change in the petition deadline for independent presidential candidates, or new parties. But the bill would have the effect of moving the non-presidential independent candidate petition deadline from March 9 to March 16, 2020.
