On March 6, the Washington Senate passed SB 5333, which moves the presidential primary from the fourth Tuesday in May to the second Tuesday in March. A similar bill in the House, HB 1469, has passed a House Committee.
1
On March 9, the New Hampshire State Senate passed SB 114. It outlaws fusion, and says a general election candidate can only receive the nomination of one party. Thanks to Darryl Perry for this news.
On March 8, the North Carolina legislature passed HB 100. It converts trial judge elections from non-partisan to partisan. Republicans back the idea. The Governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat, and he will probably veto the bill. However, North Carolina gubernatorial vetoes can be overridden with a 60% in each house of the legislature, and if there is a veto, it will probably be overridden.
The State Supreme Court and State Appeals Court judicial races are already partisan.
On March 7, the New York Senate Elections Committee passed SB 218, which eliminates residency requirements for candidate petitioners, except that it still requires them to live in New York state.
District residency requirements for petitioners in New York were declared unconstitutional in federal and state court almost ten years ago, and this bill attempts to update the election code to reflect those court decisions.
The Senate Elections Committee on March 7 also passed SB 2792, which removes party logos from general election ballots. This is one step toward making it possible for New York ballots to become more orderly. Currently New York ballot design is so bad, some candidates (always independent candidates, or the nominees of unqualified parties) are in such obscure corners of the ballot, many voters can’t find them.
On March 8, the Oklahoma Senate passed SB 145 by 41-2. The only two “no” votes were Democratic Senators Kay Floyd of Oklahoma City and Kevin Matthews of Tulsa. The bill lets independent presidential candidates, and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties, on the ballot without a petition, if they pay a filing fee of $17,500. Alternatively they can get on with a petition of 3% of the last gubernatorial vote.
Current law requires a petition of 3% of the last presidential vote, which would be 43,590 signatures in 2020. No one can know how many votes will be cast for Governor in 2018, but one can guess that 3% of the 2018 gubernatorial vote will be between 25,000 and 30,000.
The bill now goes to the House. In recent years, the House has been significantly more friendly to ballot access reform than the Senate has been. That this bill is now through the Senate makes it likely it will become law. Assuming it does become law, every state with have some method to get on the general election ballot for President that is at 2% of the last vote cast, or easier.