Recently, Bill Bayes withdrew as the Prohibition Party nominee for president in 2020. He had been nominated on November 13, 2018 in a conference call of party activists. A new such telephone conference will be held soon to replace him. Bayes lives in Mississippi and had been the party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2016. Thanks to Rick Knox for this news.
On March 28, the Florida House Judiciary Committee passed PCB JDC 19-01, which would make it illegal for out-of-state circulators to work on Florida initiatives. It would also ban paying circulators on a per-signature basis. See this story. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news. The sponsor is Representative James Grant (R-Tampa).
In 2020, only seven states won’t have government-funded presidential primaries, the fewest ever. States that did not have a presidential primary in 2016, but which will in 2020, are Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, and Utah. This assumes that one of the Maine bills for a presidential primary passes.
Generally speaking, it is easy to know or predict the date of every state’s presidential primary in 2020, except for New York. The statute says the New York 2020 presidential primary will be on February 4, but that is very unlikely to stand. Both major parties refuse to recognize primaries earlier than March 3, except for the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. Everyone expects the New York legislature to pass a bill this year setting a March date, but so far no bill is pending.
History Professor James Coll has this op-ed in the Albany Times-Union, criticizing his own state’s ballot access laws.
His op-ed does not mention that earlier this year, the New York legislature moved the independent candidate petition deadline from August to May.
