On January 27, the Arkansas Senate defeated SB 122, which would have moved the presidential primary and primaries for all other office from May to March. If the bill had passed, the petition deadlines for non-presidential independents would have moved from March of the election year, to December of the year before the election. The bill got 17 yes votes and 13 no votes, but all bills need 18 votes in the Senate to pass.

On January 30, the bill was brought up again on the Senate floor, but this time it received only 16 yes votes, and 15 no votes. So, again, it narrowly failed.

On February 3, the Utah House Government Operations Committee amended HB 22 to require that circulators for primary candidate petitions must be registered votes, and to ban paying such circulators.

Both parts of the bill violate U.S. Supreme Court precedents. The Court struck down a Colorado law banning payment for circulators in 1988 in Meyer v Grant. The Court struck down another Colorado law requiring circulators to be registered voters in Buckley v American Constitutional Law Foundation in 1999.

The U.S. Supreme Court conference of February 17 will consider whether to hear cases from Hawaii and Montana on open primaries. The Hawaii Democratic Party and the Montana Republican Party both object to being forced to nominate with systems which allow members of other parties to participate. The lower courts in each case ruled that the parties cannot prevail because they didn’t present evidence proving that the open primary injures them. Both parties argue that it is almost impossible to come up with direct evidence.

The cases are Ravalli County Republican Party v McCulloch, 16-806; and Democratic Party of Hawaii v Nago, 16-652.