The 2018 West Virginia legislature passed HB 4434, to make it clear that people who lose a primary (for office other than president) can’t petition onto the general election ballot. See this story, which says that it doesn’t go into effect for 90 days after it was signed. It was signed on March 22, so it won’t be in effect until late June.

But Don Blankenship, who ran for U.S. Senate in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate this year, might want to petition as an independent. Whether the old law would block him is not clear.

On May 16, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed HB 2538. It eliminates special U.S. Senate elections if the seat becomes vacant in the middle of an election year. Instead, in such circumstances, the gubernatorial appointee would serve two and one-half years instead of just one-half year.

The bill does not have an urgency clause, so can’t take effect this year. Republicans tried to attach an urgency clause but that takes a two-thirds vote in each house of the legislature, so Democrats blocked the urgency clause.

Steve Hoffman has filed to be on the August 2018 Washington state top-two primary ballot as a candidate for U.S. Senate. Washington state law says any candidate can choose any partisan label as long as it is not obscene and is not longer than 16 characters. However, a space counts as a character. Therefore, the ballot will put “prefers FreedomSocialist Party” on the ballot instead of “Prefers Freedom Socialist Party.”

No other state controls the number of characters in a partisan label. Other states instead control the number of words. Typically three words are permitted, but sometimes five. The Freedom Socialist Party and Hoffman are considering suing to improve the label from “FreedomSocialist” to “Freedom Socialist.”