On May 28, a special session of the Arkansas legislature passed SB 8, which moves the 2016 primary for all office from May to the first Tuesday in March. Also, it moves the filing deadline for candidates running in party primaries from March to November of the year before the election. The bill only relates to the 2016 election, and is automatically repealed after that election is over.

Because the petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties and non-presidential independent candidates are tied to the date on which candidates file for the primary, this bill makes those independent and minor party petition deadlines much earlier. The non-presidential independent petition deadline for 2016 would be November 9, 2015, if the Governor signs this bill. The petition for newly-qualifying parties becomes September 2, 2015.

Ironically, several independent candidates are already suing Arkansas over the March 2016 deadline. That case is Moore v Martin, e.d., 4:14cv-65. On May 27, the state filed its brief in defense of the old March petition deadline. The state says the plaintiffs don’t have standing because they didn’t petition. However, three times, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down or remanded ballot access restrictions even though the plaintiffs hadn’t petitioned. Those three plaintiffs were Gus Hall (Communist Party presidential candidate, who wanted to get on the California ballot as an independent candidate in 1972), Eugene McCarthy (who wanted to be on the Texas ballot as an independent in 1976), and the Socialist Labor Party (which wanted to be on the Ohio ballot in 1968).

The state’s brief says the Eighth Circuit ruled in Constitution Party of South Dakota v Nelson in 2010 that the Constitution Party didn’t have standing to challenge a South Dakota law on how many signatures a member of the party needed to get on the party’s primary ballot. But the brief of the State of Arkansas doesn’t reveal that the reason for that outcome is that the only Constitution Party candidate who tried to petition to get on his party’s primary ballot refused to be a co-plaintiff in that lawsuit. The state’s brief says that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Thomas T. Storer, an independent candidate for U.S. House in California in 1972, was told by the U.S. Supreme Court that he didn’t have standing to challenge the independent petition requirement. But that was because Storer had been a Democrat during the year before the 1972 primary, and the U.S. Supreme Court said that since Storer didn’t meet the disaffiliation requirement, which was upheld, therefore he couldn’t possibly have petitioned successfully anyway, so his objections to the number of signatures was irrelevant. This is not the same as saying that Storer didn’t have standing because he didn’t circulate a petition. Thanks to Michael Pakko and Frontloading HQ for the news about the Arkansas bill.

This story in the Los Angeles Times suggests that the future U.S. Supreme Court decision Evenwel v Abbott, 14-940, might cause California and Texas to lose seats in the U.S. House. One must read the entire article to realize it isn’t true. At the very end, election law professor Rick Hasen points out that the Constitution says, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”

Evenwel v Abbott has nothing to do with how many Representatives each state gets. It relates to how states should draw their legislative and U.S. House districts. The question it will answer is whether states should draw districts that are equal in population, or equal in the number of eligible voters.

The Libertarian Party has asked Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin for a ruling on petitions concerning presidential elections. The party won’t choose its national ticket until the end of May, 2016. Massachusetts permits independent candidate petitions, and petitions for the nominees of unqualified parties, to start circulating in February of the election year. However, in practice, if the Massachusetts petition form must list the presidential and vice-presidential nominees, the petition can’t realistically be circulated until the beginning of June 2016. It is due August 2, 2016.

The party has asked permission to circulate the petition before the presidential and vice-presidential nominees are known. The Massachusetts election law is very strong on the point that in a presidential election, the true candidates are the candidates for presidential elector. Massachusetts petitions forms not only include the names and addresses of the candidates for presidential elector, one original sheet of the petition must be signed by each candidate for presidential elector. By contrast, the petition form does not ask for the signatures of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees, although customarily their names are also on the form.

The Libertarian Party proposes that its 2016 petition include the names of the presidential electors, and their signatures, as is normal. For the blank lines listing the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, the proposed petition would say that they haven’t been chosen yet, but the electors listed on the petition at a later time would inform the Secretary of State of their choice for president and vice-president.

In 2008 the party won a lawsuit in U.S. District Court letting its petition list stand-ins for president and vice-president. Thus the party’s 2008 petition listed George Phillies for president, but the court ruling permitted the party to substitute Bob Barr after the convention was over. After the election was over, the First Circuit reversed the decision, on the grounds that it is deceiving to the voters who sign the petition to list stand-ins. The party’s new idea is designed to overcome that objection. Before the First Circuit ruling, Massachusetts had in the past permitted vice-presidential stand-ins, starting with the 1980 election, to help independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson, who didn’t choose his running mate until August 27, 1980, long after the petition had to be submitted. Anderson had listed Milton Eisenhower as his stand-in in most states, and Massachusetts accepted that.