On February 8, the Utah House Government Operations Committee passed HB 204 by 8-1. It authorizes a presidential primary in future years, but does not say anything about when that primary would be, or how candidates would get on the ballot. It does seem to indicate that any qualified party that wants a presidential primary may have one. Here is the text of the bill. It is very short.
Utah had presidential primaries in all years 2000 through 2012, but in 2016 only had caucuses.
On February 9, New Hampshire Representative Caleb Q. Dyer announced that he had changed his registration from Republican to Libertarian. He appears to be one of the youngest state legislators in the nation; he is 20 years old. See his page here. He is in his first term and lives in Pelham.
He is one of eleven representatives from Hillsborough County representative district 37. That district has more legislators than any legislative district in the nation. The ballot says “vote for eleven”. In the November 2016 election, all eleven Republican nominees were elected, defeating the ten Democratic nominees.
With great fanfare, a bill to reform many New York election laws was introduced on February 9 by Assemblymember Michael Cusick and nine others. Here is the text of A 5312.
The bill makes many improvements to New York election procedures. Unfortunately it moves the independent petition deadline from August to May. There is absolutely no reason to change this petition deadline. If the bill is enacted as written, New York would have the nation’s earliest petition deadline for presidential candidates of any state. May and June deadlines for presidential petitions have been declared unconstitutional in these cases:
Alaska: June too early. Sykes v McAlpine, 1990, Superior Court, 3AN-88-8695, not reported
Arizona: June too early. Nader v Brewer, 531 F.3d 1028 (Ninth Circuit 2008)
Idaho: May too early. Populist Party v Evans, 1984, Ninth Circuit, 84-4108, not reported
Kansas: June too early. Merritt v Graves I, 1988, U.S. Dist. Ct., 87-4264, not reported
Massachusetts: May too early. Serrette v Connolly, 1985, Superior Court, 68172 Suffolk, not reported
Nevada: June too early. Fulani v Lau, 1992, U.S. Dist. Ct., cv-N-92-535, not reported
South Dakota: June too early. Nader v Hazeltine, 110 F.Supp.2d 1201 (2000)
The bill moves the primary for all non-presidential office to the fourth Tuesday in June. The deadline moves from the 11th week before the general election to the 22nd week before the election, which would range from May 25 to May 31, depending on the calendar. The authors of the bill seem to feel that the independent petition deadline should be at least a month before the primary, but the policy of setting independent candidate deadlines several weeks before the primary was held unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Anderson v Celebrezze in 1983, and in two U.S. Supreme Court summary affirmances, Lendall v Jernigan in 1977, and and Salera v Tucker in 1976.
The good features of this comprehensive bill set up no-excuse absentee voting, same-day registration, freedom for individuals on parole to register to vote, more time for voters to switch parties before a primary, and ease voter registration procedures in general.
On February 6, the Virginia Senate defeated SB 821 by 11-29. It would have put a question about party membership (or independent status) on voter registration forms. It would also have let parties choose to close their primaries. Virginia has always had open primaries, and on primary day, any voter is free to choose any primary ballot.
The bill had passed the Senate Privileges & Elections Committee by 7-6.
On February 8, Tennessee Representative Bud Hulsey (R-Kingsport) introduced HB 662. It lowers the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party from 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote (now 33,816 signatures) to exactly 5,000. It also lowers the vote test from 5% for any statewide race at the last election, to 1.5% at any of the last three elections. Here is the text. Thanks to Jim Tomasic for this news.
