On January 23, the Arkansas House State Agencies & Governmental Affairs Committee passed HB 1152. It moves the petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates from March 1 to May 1. However, independent candidates still would need to file a declaration of candidacy by March 1.

The bill’s author is Representative Justin Boyd (R-Fort Smith). The motivation for the bill is that the March 1 deadline was declared unconstitutional in December 2017. However, the state has been appealing this decision in the Eighth Circuit. The appeal is still pending.

On January 23, a hearing was held in U.S. District Court in Maryland, in Johnston v Lamone, the lawsuit over the Maryland definition of “political party”. At the hearing, the state agreed to leave the Libertarian Party as a choice on the voter registration forms until the lawsuit gets a ruling, which will be quite soon. There will be oral argument on Thursday, January 31, at 2:30 p.m. The issue is whether it the state’s definition of a qualified party is constitutional, as applied to a party like the Libertarian Party, which has over 10,000 registered voters yet which is not a qualified party.

The party argues that it is not rational to force it to obtain 10,000 signatures on a petition to restore its party status, when it has 22,464 registered members. It seems that if the party has that many registered voters, there are more than 10,000 voters in the state who want it on the ballot, so the petition would be meaningless. The case is before U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake, a Clinton appointee. There really are no cases on point.

The Green Party has 9,285 registered members. It is not on the ballot either, but if the Libertarians prevail in court, and the Green Party increases its registration to at least 10,000, that would help the Green Party also.

On January 22, the Wyoming Senate Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions Committee passed SF 65. This bill is titled “Open Ranked Choice Elections.” The Committee also directed that it be amended, but the amendment isn’t on the legislature’s web page yet, probably because it hasn’t been written. The vote was 3-2. All five voters were from Republicans. Voting in favor were Cale Case, Tara Nethercott, and Wendy Schuler. Voting against were Charles Scott and Bill Landen.

The same Committee defeated SF 32, which would have prohibited voters from changing parties after May 1 of an election year, and thus would have ended the provision that lets a primary voter decide on primary day which party to join.