U.S. District Court Judge David Nuffer, an Obama appointee, will hold a hearing in United Utah Party v Cox, 2:17cv-655, on Monday, June 26, at 2:30 p.m. This is the case on whether the Utah state government may bar the party from placing its nominee on the November 2017 ballot for U.S. House, special election, 3rd district. The state says the party was formed too late to participate in the election.
The North Carolina House will vote on SB 656, the ballot access bill, on Monday, June 26. If it passes, it must then return to the Senate for concurrence in House amendments. It lowers the number of signatures for a new party from 94,221 signatures to 10,000.
On June 21, the Maine Senate tabled LD 1625, the bill to repeal the Ranked Choice Voting initiative passed by the voters in November 2016. The Senate also gave preliminary approval to LD 1624, which would begin the process of amending the state constitution to allow ranked choice voting.
On June 22, the Maine House took similar action. See this story, which was written before the House had acted. Generally, the votes were by voice vote, so there is no tally of “ayes” and “nays.”
The New York legislature adjourned on the evening of June 21. Although 222 bills to amend the election law had been introduced this year, none of them passed (many of these bills are duplicates of other bills).
Bills that would have improved the appearance and clarity of the ballot were SB 2792 and AB 7333. Bills that would have somewhat liberalized the law on residency of circulators were AB 567 and SB 218.
SB 4780 and AB 5735 would have provided that the state should spend money educating voters that New York has closed primaries.
AB 3052 and SB 3562 would have moved the independent candidate petition deadline from August to May.
Many bills would have made voting easier, by allowing early voting or same-day voter registration, or easing the deadline for primary voters to join parties so as to be able to vote in their primaries.
The Maine House passed LD 31 on June 16. This is the bill that would amend the state constitution to provide that statewide initiatives need signatures of 10% of the last gubernatorial vote in each of the two U.S. House districts. Currently initiatives need 10%, but the signatures can come from anywhere in the state.
On June 19, the Senate sent the bill to the Appropriations Table. This probably means the bill is dead for the year. The legislature adjourns on June 26. Even if it had passed, it would not have taken effect without a vote of the voters.
