On March 2, the South Dakota Secretary of State’s office determined that the initiative for a top-two system failed to submit enough valid signatures. The petition is 2,236 valid signatures short. See this story.
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The Georgia legislative deadline for bills in the 2017-2018 session to pass one house passed on February 28, and neither of the bills to improve ballot access met that deadline. HB 133 would have reduced the number of signtures for most offices. SB 112 would have eliminated mandatory petitions for all candidates. Neither of them made any headway.
Not only that, no bill was introduced to acknowledge that in early 2017, the Eleventh Circuit agreed with the U.S. District Court that the number of signatures for president is unconstitutional. Until the legislature does something about that, the court order setting the petition at 7,500 signatures remains in effect.
The Libertarian Party lawsuit against the number of signatures needed for U.S. House candidates is in U.S. District Court, in the evidence-gathering phase.
BAN did not know that in 2017, the Georgia legislature made ballot access worse. HB 268, signed into law on May 9, 2017, moved the deadline for petitioning candidates to file their notice of candidacy and filing fee from June to the first week in March. The law does not affect candidates for presidential elector, though. Thanks to Hugh Esco for this news. The vote in the Senate was 32-18; in the House it was 111-57. Similar laws, requiring candidates to file a declaration of candidacy early in the year, have been declared unconstitutional in South Carolina (Cromer v State) and West Virginia (Daly v Tennant).
On March 1, the Alabama Senate unanimously passed SB 15. All Alabama legislators have four-year terms. The bill says if a legislative vacancy occurs in the second half of a four-year term, the seat would simply remain vacant until the next regular election.
This change requires a change in the state Constitution, so if it passes, the voters would vote on it. The rationale for the bill is to save costs associated with holding special elections. The sponsor is Senator Rusty Glover (R-Semmes).
On February 28, the Georgia Senate passed SB 403. It says that vote-counting machines with no paper trail cannot be used starting in 2024, and the state will replace the old machines sooner than that if funding is provided.
On March 2, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed AB 8917, which moves this year’s primary (for state and local office) from September 11 to September 13. That gives New York the latest primary date of any state, for 2018.