HB 293, which moves the even year midterm primaries from June to the second Tuesday in March, was approved in the Mississippi House and Senate on April 1 and had been sent to the Governor’s office. No action has been taken there yet. Governor Tate Reeves has until April 24 to act on the legislation. The bill would change the deadline to qualify a new party from February to January in midterm years.
Here is a link to the current bill.
Earlier this month, HB1169 failed to become law in South Dakota. It would have required initiatives that would change the state Constitution to collect the signatures of 5% of the last gubernatorial vote in each of the state’s 35 legislative districts.
HB1169 passed the SD House and Senate in March, but was vetoed by Governor Larry Rhoden on March 31. The House had passed it by a wide margin, but the Senate passed it by only a 19-15 vote in March. Consequently, the Senate vote in April to override the Governor’s veto failed, and the bill died.
On March 12, SB209 and SB210 were signed into law by Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
SB210 mandates that a circulator read the summary of the initiative to any potential signer. Sometimes the summary is long and detailed and can require as much as five minutes to be read aloud. If the circulator doesn’t obey this law, it will be considered a criminal act.
SB209 says that if a petitioner is found to have committed any crimes, none of the signatures he or she obtained are valid.
There are other bills that were recently passed in Arkansas that greatly injure the initiative process. The sponsor of all these bills was Senator Kim Hammer (R-Benton).
BAN has learned that there is likely to be upcoming litigation challenging the constitutionality of these and the other Arkansas anti-initiative laws that were covered in the April 1 edition of Ballot Access News.
On April 9, the Sixth Circuit issued a ruling in Brown v Yost, 25-3179, a long-running lawsuit over Ohio initiative procedures. Here is the 2-1 ruling. The majority consists of Judge Karen Nelson Moore, a Clinton appointee; and Judge Andre Mathis, a Biden appointee. The dissent is by Judge John K. Bush, a Trump appointee.
Ohio law says sponsors of an initiative process cannot begin to circulate their initiative until the Attorney General approves the description that is printed in the petition. In the instance which prompted the lawsuit, the Attorney General had rejected the description eight times, which made it impossible for the proponents to qualify the initiative. The plaintiff had already won the lawsuit in U.S. District Court, but the District Court had stayed its own opinion. The Sixth Circuit has now removed the stay.
Nevada Assembly Bill 534 has a hearing on April 10 in the Assembly Legislative Operations and Elections Committee. It would require independent candidates (for office other than president) to file a declaration of candidacy in February. It is part of an omnibus election law bill sponsored by the committee.
Such laws have been declared unconstitutional in West Virginia, Kentucky, and South Carolina. The precedents are based on Anderson v Celebrezze, which said that states must give independents a chance to get on the ballot after the major parties must identified their candidates. The South Carolina decision, Cromer v State of South Carolina, 917 F 2d 819 (1990), was a US Court of Appeals decision. The other two are U.S. District Court decisions: Kentucky’s is Sweeney v Crigler, 457 F Supp 3d 577 (2019); and West Virginia is Daly v Tennant, 216 F Supp 3d 199 (2016).
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