On March 7, the Arkansas Senate passed SB 445 by 20-7. It moves the primary, for all office, in presidential years, from May to the first week in March. It also sets an earlier deadline for primary candidates to file. The existing deadline is 75 days before the primary, but the bill moves that to 92 days, in presidential election years only.

The existing law says the petition to qualify a new party is due 60 days before the date on which primary candidates file. This means that the bill, if enacted, will move the petition deadline for a newly-qualifying party from January of the election year, to October of the odd year before the election.

On March 5, the Kentucky House passed HB 325 by 92-4. Existing law lets voters change parties just a few weeks before a primary, if they wish to vote in their new party’s primary. The bill says that no one can vote in a primary unless he or she had been continuously registered in that party since December 31 of the year before the primary. Voters who had not been registered on December 31 of the year before the primary are exempt, of course, but once they register in the election year, they must remain in that same party if they wish to vote in its primary that year.

Kentucky law still doesn’t acknowledge that parties are free to decide to invite independents to vote in their own primaries, per the U.S. Supreme Court decision Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut.

The only House members who voted “no” are four Democrats: Jeffrey Donohue, Cluster Howard, Dennis Keene, and Josie Raymond. Assuming this bill becmes law, Kentucky will be the second-most restrictive state in the nation, concerning when voters may switch parties and vote in their new party’s primary. Only New York will have a more severe time period.

Utah elects a state school board from districts. Those elections are non-partisan. A few years ago the law was changed to say those elections are “partisan”, but that law was not specific. Utah State Senator Ann Millner (R-Ogden), a supporter of partisan school board elections, has introduced SB 236, to reword the existing law in a more coherent fashion.

Meanwhile, the original law switching school board elections to non-partisan elections has been challenged as being unconstitutional. The case is pending in the Utah Supreme Court. The Utah Constitution says no employee of the public school system shall ever be treated differently because of that employee’s partisan affiliation. The challengers argue that provision makes partisan elections for school board unconstitutional. Defenders of partisan elections say the state constitution is referring to employees, not school board elected members.