On May 2, the California Senate passed SB 27. This is the bill to keep presidential primary candidates off the ballot if they don’t release the last five years of their income tax returns. The vote was 27-10, with all Democrats who voted voting “yes”, and all Republicans who voted voting “no.” Now the bill goes to the Assembly.
The bill does not prevent anyone from filing as a write-in candidate in a presidential primary.
On May 2, the Arizona House defeated SB 1154 by 28-32. This is the bill that would have moved the non-presidential primary from late August to early August. It would also have moved the petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties from February of the election year, to November of the odd year before the election.
Some county committees of the Florida Democratic Party have recently resolved that the party should let independents vote in its primaries. Although Florida election law says only party members can vote in primaries, the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1986 in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut that parties have a freedom of association right to invite independents to vote in their primaries, regardless of state law.
As recently as April 18, 2009, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, Terrie L. Rizzo, wrote this comment on a party facebook page, “The party doesn’t make the determination on who gets to vote in our primary.” She has been chair since 2017. It is believed that since April 18, she has learned about the Tashjian decision.
In 1996, former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm sought the Reform Party presidential nomination. He was defeated for that nomination by Ross Perot in a mail ballot. Perot received 32,145 votes; Lamm received 17,121. Third Party Watch recently interviewed Lamm about the 1996 campaign, and the Reform Party’s 2000 presidential campaign, and also about Lamm’s thoughts about the upcoming presidential election. See this link.
The interviewer makes one linguistic error when he or she refers to the general election funding the Reform Party received in 2000. General election funding for the presidential campaigns of certain parties is not “matching funds.” There is no matching for general election presidential public funding. The amount of money is calculated using the party’s percentage of the vote in the previous presidential election. “Matching funds” only refers to primary season public funding. Thanks to Independent Political Report for the link.
On April 30, Colorado state officials announced that the 2020 presidential primaries will be March 3. The law gives the Governor and the Secretary of State some discretion to set the date. The announcement was somewhat surprising. It had been thought that the 2020 primary date would be March 10.
