On March 7, the Massachusetts Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the lawsuit over whether the Massachusetts Constitution forbids requiring voters to have registered at least 20 days before an election. See this story.
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On March 7, the Utah House passed HB 338, which repeals the law that allows candidates to petition onto a primary ballot even though they may not have much support at at party convention or caucus. The vote was 53-19. It now goes to the Senate. The legislature adjourns on March 8.
Matt Ford has this essay in The New Republic, on whether states can keep presidential candidates off the ballot who refuse to release their income tax returns. The piece does not mention the precedent LaRouche v Hannah, 822 SW 2d 632, issued by a unanimous Texas Supreme Court in 1992. That decision says LaRouche could not be kept off the Democratic presidential primary ballot, because to do so would violate Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which sets out the requirements for anyone to serve as president. He was serving a term in federal prison at the time.
Also the article does not mention either Eugene Debs or Vincent Hallinan, presidential candidates in 1920 and 1952. They were both serving time in federal prison at the time of the election, but no state kept them off the ballot for that reason.
Furthermore, the qualifications to run for Congress, listed in Article One, are worded very similarly to the qualifications to run for President in Article Two. Article One says, “No person shall be a representative who shall not have attained the age of twenty five years…”. Article Two says, “No person… shall be eligible to the office of President…who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years.” It defies common sense to think that the states can’t tamper with the Article One qualifications, but they can tamper with the Article Two qualifications.
The article mentions that states are free to choose presidential electors any way they wish. But this confuses the ability of the states to choose electors, with the ability of states to tell the chosen electors whom they can or can’t vote for. The pending cases in federal court from California, Colorado, and Minnesota, over whether states can tell electors how to vote, are dealing with this distinction. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Kenneth Mejia is a Green Party candidate for U.S. House in California’s 34th District. During 2017 he raised $58,544 for his 2018 run, and he has probably raised more in the last few months. The 34th district is in downtown Los Angeles. The incumbent Democrat, Jimmy Gomez, is running for re-election. It is possible that when filing closes on March 9, the only two candidates who will have filed are Mejia and Gomez.
Congressman Gomez was elected in a special election in 2017. The seat needed a special election because the incumbent who was elected in 2016, Xavier Becerra, resigned shortly after the 2016 election to become the appointed Attorney General of California. Mejia ran in the special election in 2017 as well, and placed 4th out of 24 candidates. He polled 4.2%.
Here is Mejia’s campaign web page. His surname is of Filipino origin. The district is fairly evenly divided between Hispanics and Asians, especially Korean-Americans.
According to this story, former Rhode Island Secretary of State Matt Brown may run for Governor this year as an independent. He was a Democrat when he was the Secretary of State 2002-2006.