According to Michael Drucker, the New York State Democratic Committee will meet on Monday, March 4. On the agenda is a resolution that would ask the New York legislature to ban fusion, the practice of letting two parties jointly nominate the same candidate.
On February 26, the Arizona House defeated HB 2127 by 23-36. The bill would have moved the deadline for a candidate to file for the primary from 90 days before the primary, to 120 days. The bill would have had the indirect effect of moving the petition deadline for a non-presidential independent candidate from May to April.
The California bill to require presidential candidates to reveal their income tax returns will be heard in the Senate Elections Committee on March 19, Tuesday. Here is the text of the bill. It has an urgency clause, so it needs two-thirds in each house. However Democrats have more than two-thirds in each house of the legislature.
Ten Maine legislators have introduced LD 1083, which would use ranked choice voting for president in the general election. Although Maine already uses ranked choice voting for congress, it has never permitted it for president.
The bill would also provide for ranked choice voting in Maine’s presidential primary, if Maine has a presidential primary. A bill introduced in January 2019 to provide for a 2020 presidential primary, LD 245, is still in committee.
On March 1, the North Carolina State Board of Elections posted the dates for the upcoming special election to fill the vacancy in the 3rd U.S. House seat. The seat is vacant because Congressman Walter B. Jones died on February 10, 2019.
The primary will be April 30. If the primaries for all parties that hold a primary (Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian) produce a candidate who gets the most votes and gets at least 30%, then there is no runoff primary. But if no one gets 30% in any party’s primary, then there must be a runoff primary for that party or parties, to be held on July 9. If there is a runoff primary, the special election will be September 10. If there is no need for a runoff primary, then the special election will be July 9.
Independent candidates need 6,998 valid signatures, due April 15. The petition deadline, for submission of the signatures to the county election boards, is 15 days before the petitions are due at the State Board of Elections. The checked petitions are due at the State Board of Elections on primary day, April 30. Thus independent candidates only have one and one-half months to collect a large number of signatures. This requirement is almost surely unconstitutional, given the short petitioning period. In a regular election an independent has two years to collect signatures. The number of signatures is 1.5% of the number of registered voters in the district.
