On March 11, the New Mexico Judiciary Committee tabled HB 206. This is the bill that would have required parties with primaries to let independents vote in those primaries. Apparently the bill was written to also allow members of unqualified parties to vote in major party primaries, and that bothered some legislators. See this story.
Here is the text of Texas HB 3068, which eases ballot access for independent candidates and minor parties. It was introduced last week but the text wasn’t available at first.
On March 9, the Arizona House Government Committee passed SB 1307 unanimously. It changes the deadline for parties to file their presidential elector candidates from June to late August. The bill had already passed the Senate.
On March 9, the Maryland House unanimously passed HB 529, which lowers the number of signatures for a statewide independent from 1% of the number of registered voters (over 40,000) to exactly 10,000. The bill now goes to the Senate.
On March 13, a Superior Court Judge in California ruled that the lawsuit Ricardo De La Fuente v Padilla cannot succeed because of procedural problems. The issue is whether the candidate’s surname is De La Fuente or Fuente. He is running for U.S. House in the special election, 34th district, in April. He would have had a higher position on the ballot if his surname were deemed to be Fuente, as opposed to De La Fuente.
But the judge said the case is flawed because the Registrar of Voters of Los Angeles County was not included as a Defendant. Also the case had been filed on February 28, and the judge felt it should have been filed sooner. The ballots have already been printed. But the judge said that otherwise the lawsuit had merit.
Ricardo De La Fuente is the son of Rocky De La Fuente, independent presidential candidate in 2016. Thanks to Mark Seidenberg for this news. The case is Sacramento Superior Court number 34-2017-80002546.
