On May 15, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed SB 323. It roughly doubles all the candidate filing fees. This means the filing fee for independent presidential candidates, and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties, will be $35,000 in 2020, unless the fee is struck down.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lubin v Panish and also Bullock v Carter that filing fees are unconstitutional unless they are needed to keep ballots from being too crowded. Because the new filing fee for Governor will be $2,000, it may be difficult for the state to explain why it needs $35,000 for President.

On May 15, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that at its May 11 conference, it had refused to hear all four election law cases that were before it.

It refused to hear Libertarian Party of Kentucky v Grimes, 16-1034, thus continuing its 26-year record of refusing all cert petitions from minor parties and independent candidates that concern election law (unless the major parties were also in the same case). The issue was the state’s restrictive definition of “political party”, one which requires certain support in a presidential race.

It refused to hear North Carolina v North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, 16-833, over the election laws that affect voting and were passed in 2013, when Republicans won complete control of state government. The 2013 laws curtailed the ability of voters to vote early, eliminated the ability to register to vote the day before the election, curtailed the ability to cast a provisional ballot out of the precinct of residence, and imposed a government photo-ID requirement for voters at the polls. The U.S. District Court had upheld all those laws, but the Fourth Circuit had invalidated all of them. The basis for the Fourth Circuit decision is that all these laws had a racially discriminatory intent.

It refused to hear the Montana Republican and Hawaii Democratic cases against open primaries. They were Democratic Party of Hawaii v Nago, 16-652, and Ravalli County Republican Committee v Stapleton, 16-806.

Next week the U.S. Supreme Court may reveal whether it will hear Republican Party of Louisiana v Federal Election Commission, 16-865, over federal campaign finance laws that inhibit contributions to state and local parties. Soon it will also act on Gill v Whitford, 16-1161, over Wisconsin’s partisan legislative gerrymander.

At the June 1972 election, California voters passed Proposition 4. It amended the California Constitution, Article II, section 5, concerning the presidential primary. It has never been altered and is in the Constitution today. It requires the legislature to “provide for partisan elections for presidential candidates…including an open presidential primary whereby the candidates on the ballot are those found by the Secretary of State to be recognized candidates throughout the nation.”

The purpose of this change was to end the requirement that presidential primary candidates must petition to get on the California presidential primary. Before it was adopted, it was very difficult for candidates to get on the California presidential primary ballot; they needed a petition of 1% of that party’s registered voters. After it was adopted, no petitions were needed. The Secretary of State was directed to choose which candidates should be on the ballot by seeing which candidates are mentioned in news media. Many other states copied this idea, and it is in place in almost half the states with presidential primaries.

There is no doubt that Proposition 4 was intended to apply to which candidates are on the ballot, and does not relate to who can vote in the presidential primary. This is clear from the ballot arguments in the Voters Pamphlet, and from the news stories about the campaign for and against the measure. But the California Voters Project has for several years insisted that California is violating its own constitution by holding a semi-closed presidential primary for some parties, and a closed presidential primary for other parties. See this article posted by the Project on May 12.

Representatives of the California Voters Project testified against AB 837 on April 26. AB 837 requires that election officials take steps to inform independent voters of their right to choose the presidential primary ballot of parties that have agreed to let independent voters have such a ballot. The Independent Voters Project witnesses said they oppose AB 837 because the entire California presidential primary is in violation of the California Constitution. They did not acknowledge the legal analysis of the bill, which rebuts their point. And their blog post fails to quote the entire portion of the California Constitution.