On March 25, the Arizona House Rules Committee passed SB 1154. It moves the primary from the last week in August to the first week in August. It also moves the petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties from February of the election year to November of the year before the election.
The Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives has published Statistics of the Congressional Election of November 6, 2018. It has 60 pages and has the election returns for each congressional general election. The Clerk has been publishing a book like this every two years, starting in 1920. It is free and can be requested by phoning 202-226-5200.
Later the Federal Election Commission will also publish election returns for 2018, for congress, and the FEC book will have primary election results. That book will be titled “Federal Elections 2018.” It will also be free.
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.
Texas Representative Drew Springer (R-Muenster) has introduced HB 2504. It would require the nominees of parties that nominate by convention to pay the same filing fees that primary candidates must pay. The Texas filing fee was originally enacted to help primary parties pay the election administration costs of their own primaries. No Texas law ever required filing fees for any other candidates.
Texas Representative Valoree Swanson (R-Spring) has introduced HB 4521. It would require independent candidates to pay the same filing fees.
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.
