On February 9, attorneys for Illinois state government filed this Seventh Circuit brief in Libertarian Party of Illinois v Scholz, 16-1667. The issue is the constitutionality of the law that requires newly-qualifying parties (but not established parties) to run a full slate of candidates. The 21-page brief says the state interest in this law is to “promote political stability, prevent ballot overcrowding, and avoid voter confusion and deception.” This boiler-plate language from Jenness v Fortson (a U.S. Supreme Court decision from Georgia, issued in 1971) is typically inserted in state government briefs in defense of restrictive ballot access laws. The state’s brief contains no more specific state interest.

The state admits that no other state has ever had a full-slate requirement. The state brief does not acknowledge that three different U.S. District Court Judges have all criticized the law in separate decisions, in either this case or a related pending case (this case is quite old, and while it was in the U.S. District Court, it was handled successively by three different judges).

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.

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.