The Huffington Post has this story about the election victory of the Working Families Party in a special Connecticut legislative election last week.
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On the evening of April 27, the Oklahoma House passed SB 145 unanimously. This is the bill that eases ballot access for independent presidential candidates, and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties. The sponsor’s office had told me on April 27, on the phone, that it would not be brought up on April 27, which was the deadline for bills this year. It wasn’t on the day’s agenda. But, after that phone call, the sponsor arranged to have the bill added onto the agenda, a very unusual move for that time of day. The bill had passed the Senate in March.
The bill reduces the number of signatures for president from 3% of the last presidential vote, to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. More significantly, it lets a candidate on the ballot without a petition, if the candidate pays a filing fee. The amount of that fee equals seven multiplied by the filing fee for presidential primary candidates. Unfortunately the legislature might pass SB 323 soon. That bill raises the presidential primary filing fee from $2,500 to $5,000. If SB 323, as currently worded, becomes law, the general election filing fee for independent presidential candidates will be a staggering $35,000 instead of $17,500.
On April 4, Libertarian Party member Austin Gravley was elected to the Frostproof, Florida, city council. See this story. The election is non-partisan. Frostproof has a population of 3,000 and is in Polk County, in the center of the state.
On April 27, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe issued this press release. Since July 2016, he has restored the voting rights of 156,000 ex-felons. In July 2016 the Virginia Supreme Court had rejected his attempts to restore such rights en masse. Since then he has had to do this work for each individual ex-felon.
On April 26, the North Carolina Senate unanimously passed SB 655. It moves the primary, for all office in all election years, from early May to early March. Because the bill does not adjust the independent candidate petition deadline, and because existing law links that deadline to the date of the primary, if the bill passed, the independent candidate petition deadline in 2018 would be February 21. This is clearly unconstitutional. In 1980 a U.S. District Court had ruled that the April deadline for independent candidate petitions was too early.