On March 31, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed SB 1153. It moves the filing deadline for write-in candidates from 40 days before any primary or general election, to 60 days before.
1
A bill has been introduced in the Puerto Rico legislature to cancel presidential primaries if it appears there is no suspense as to who is likely to be nominated. It is PC 76.
On March 20, the Seventh Circuit issued a four-page opinion in Marshall v Wisconsin Election Commission, 24-2746. This was the last pending lawsuit filed by independent presidential candidate Shiva Ayyadurai last year, over whether states can keep presidential candidates off the ballot if they don’t meet the constitutional requirements. The decision is unsigned and will not be published. It says the whole issue is “frivolous” and that states may keep such presidential candidates off the ballot. This is a more complicated issue than the opinion acknowledges. It occupied hundreds of pages of briefs and amicus briefs in 2024 in Trump v Anderson, the case over whether Donald Trump should be on various ballots in 2024.
The judges are Frank Easterbrook, a Reagan appointee; Thomas K. Kirsch II, a Trump appointee; and Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, a Biden appointee. This case arose from Wisconsin.
All year, a case has been pending in the U.S. Supreme Court on the federal law that limits how much political parties may spend on the campaigns of their own nominees, assuming the party and the nominee coordinate with each other. The case is National Republican Senatorial Committee v FEC, 24-3051.
The FEC still hasn’t filed a brief in defense of the law. The FEC response deadline has been postponed four times. It was due January 6, then February 6, then March 10, then April 9, and is now due May 9.
On April 8, the Republican Party of Lynchburg, Virginia, filed a federal lawsuit against a new law that makes it almost impossible for a qualified party to nominate by any means other than government-administered primary. Lynchburg Republican City Committee v Virginia Department of Elections, w.d., 6:25cv-29. Here is the Complaint, which challenges a law that took effect last year that requires parties to nominate by a means that allows absentee voting. The lawsuit complains that in practice, a party that wants to nominate by party meeting simply can’t comply with the new law.
The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Norman K. Moon, a Clinton appointee.