Rocky De La Fuente, an independent presidential candidate last year, currently is suing California over its requirement that independent presidential candidates in 2016 needed 178,039 signatures. On March 10, De La Fuente argued in the Ninth Circuit that the U.S. District Court that denied his request to be put on the ballot should be instructed not to depend on the Hawaii precedent Nader v Cronin.

The U.S. District Court last year had denied De La Fuente’s request to be put on the ballot, on the basis that his lawsuit was unlikely to win. The U.S. District Court in 2016 noted that the Ninth Circuit in 2010 had upheld Hawaii’s 2004 independent presidential petition requirement of 3,711 signatures. The U.S. District Court in 2016 said that because Hawaii required 1% of the last presidential vote, and California requires 1% of the number of registered voters, the cases are virtually the same, and therefore the California De La Fuente case is very unlikely to win.

The U.S. District Court in California still hasn’t ruled on whether the California law is constitutional, and will do so in the future. But in the meantime, De La Fuente wanted the Ninth Circuit to tell the U.S. District Court not to rely so heavily on the Hawaii case. But the Ninth Circuit, which heard this case on March 10, seemed inclined to stay out of the case at this point, and not consider that issue until after the U.S. District Court rules on declaratory relief. The three judges who heard the case on March 10 were Marsha Berzon, Morgan Christen, and Richard Paez. The hearing only lasted 10 minutes.

The North Carolina bill that converts elections for local judicial elections from non-partisan to partisan elections, also changes the deadline for all independent candidates (for all office, even President) from June to April. The two subjects of whether judicial elections should be partisan, and what the deadline should be for independent candidates for all office, are not really related to each other. But it is common for legislatures to alter two different subjects in a single bill.

It is not known what caused the legislature to change the petition deadline for independent candidates. However, the deadline change would be held unconstitutional, because in 1980 a U.S. District Court struck down North Carolina’s independent petition deadline for independent candidates. By coincidence, the deadline struck down in 1980 was April 25, and under the current HB 100, the 2018 deadline for independent candidates would also be April 25. The 1980 decision was Greaves v North Carolina State Board of Elections, 508 F Supp 78 (e.d.).

April petition deadlines for independent candidates for president are clearly unconstitutional under Anderson v Celebrezze. Other states in which April petition deadlines (for independent candidates or new parties) have been declared unconstitutional are Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Utah.

The North Carolina bill, HB 100, can be read here. It has already passed the legislature. The Governor may veto it, but the legislature has enough Republicans in both houses to override his veto. The date of the 2018 primary is May 8.

This story says Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering running for U.S. Senate in 2018 as an independent. If he does that, his own top-two law will not permit him to have the ballot label “independent”. The law, which he backed with all his resources, says independents are on the ballot as “party preference: none.”

The California U.S. Senate seat up in 2018 is held by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was born in 1933 and will therefore be age 85 in 2018. She has not said whether she intends to run for re-election in 2018 or not.