On June 6, the North Carolina House passed SB 655, which moves primaries for all office from May to March. However, also on June 6, the House amended the bill so that it doesn’t take effect until after 2018. The reason is that the state will need to redistrict, and putting the 2018 primary in March would make it more difficult to do the redistricting.

The vote on the bill itself was 71-46. Generally Republicans voted “yes” and Democrats voted “no.” Now the bill goes back to the Senate, to consider the amendment that set the effective date after 2018.

Professor Chia-Chi Teng, who wanted to run for U.S. House in the November 2017 special election in Utah’s Third District, was barred from the Republican primary ballot because he didn’t file in-person. He was temporarily teaching in China. He sued to overturn the law that requires filing in person (except for government employees and members of the military), but lost in the lower state court. On June 5 he said he will not appeal to the Utah Supreme Court.

However, state representative Craig Hall says he will introduce a bill next year to delete the requirement that candidates must file in-person. See this story.

This article in the Gotham Gazette predicts that very few election law bills will pass this year in the New York legislature.