The Utah legislature has passed HB 272. It requires declared write-in candidates to pay filing fees. Write-in presidential candidates would be charged $500. Other candidates would pay one-eighth of 1% of the annual salary for the full term of the office.

Courts in California, Maryland, and West Virginia have struck down filing fees for declared write-in candidates. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that filing fees are unconstitutional except to the extent they protect ballots from being crowded with too many candidates. Requiring write-in candidates to pay filing fees does not serve the interest of keeping a ballot from being too crowded, because the names of write-in candidates are not printed on ballots.

Governor Gary Herbert signed the bill on March 22.

Illinois Senator Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) has introduced SB 1830. It sets out a procedure for a party that nominates by primary to replace any nominee, if that nominee is found to be associated with any Communist, Fascist or Nazi Group, or if the nominee has engaged in “hate speech”. A petition can be circulated to trigger the procedure. It needs the same number of signatures that were required for the candidate to have qualified for the primary ballot. Only people who voted in that primary may sign.

If the signatures are collected, then the appropriate political party committee may then vote on whether to replace the nominee.

The Illinois election code still contains another provision, banning any Communist, Nazi or Fascist Party from the ballot. This was was held unconstitutional in federal court in 1942. It was the first ballot access law ever invalidated by a federal court. The state did not appeal, but the law has never been replaced. The same law was also held unconstitutional in 1972. Apparently the plaintiffs, the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, did not know when they filed their 1972 lawsuit that the law had already been declared unconstitutional in 1942.

Montana Representative Denise Hayman (D-Bozeman), the Democratic Party Whip, has introduced HB 647. It would increase the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party from 5,000 signatures to 5% of the vote cast for the winning gubernatorial candidate. It would also outlaw using out-of-state circulators for the party petition, and would forbid paying them on a per-signature basis.

If this bill passed, Montana would have the nation’s highest mandatory petition requirement for a new party to get on the ballot, for office other than president. The 2020 petition would be 12,798 valid signatures, due in March. That would be 2.57% of the vote cast for president in 2016. Even the states that have 3% petitions all base them on turnout in midterm years, but Montana elects its Governors in presidential years, when turnout is higher.

Republicans have a majority in both houses of the Montana legislature. The Montana Democratic Party sued to get the Green Party off the ballot in 2018, and this bill seems to have the partisan intent of keeping the Green Party off the ballot in the future. The Green Party is already in federal court against the existing law, which has an unequal distribution requirement and a deadline that is probably unconstitutionally early.

The bill not only retains the existing distribution requirement, it makes it even more difficult, by eliminating the cap of 150 signatures per legislative district.