The U.S. Supreme Court will consider the Indiana ballot access case at its March 21 conference. Indiana Green Party v Morales, 24M68. The Court will decide whether to docket the case. Here is the filing, explaining why the plaintiffs have had such trouble getting docketed.
Rob Richie, formerly of Fairvote, has launched a new organization, Expand Democracy, to work for various election law reforms. The goal of the organization includes easing ballot access laws. See the announcement of the founding here.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had a bill in the special session earlier that would have reduced candidate filing fees. Florida has the highest filing fees of any state. But that bill, HB 21a, did not pass. It was an omnibus election law bill that also would have made it far more difficult for initiatives to get on the ballot.
Now that the regular session is about to start, the Governor’s election law ideas are in new identical bills, SB 1414 and HB 1205. Unfortunately, these bills do not reduce the filing fees. The bills are so long and complicated, a mere description of all the changes in the bills takes twenty pages. See it here. The sponsors are Senator Blaise Ingoglia and Representative Jenna Persons-Mulicka.
As already reported, the Wyoming Senate Majority Leader killed the HB 173, the bill to vastly increase the independent candidate petition reqauirements. It had passed the House overwhelmingly and had also passed the Senate Committee, yet it died because Senator Tara Nethercott, the Majority Floor Leader, didn’t allow the bill to be brought up on the Senate floor.
This story says that Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who supported HB 173, has expressed unhappiness that seven election law bills failed to get through. The story does not list the bills, but it clearly relates to the ballot access bill.
On December 16, 2024, the Georgia Libertarian and Green Parties filed a new lawsuit against the Georgia campaign finance law that lets individuals give more contributions to Republican and Democratic candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, than those individuals may give to other candidates for those two offices. Libertarian Party of Georgia v Carr, n.d., 1:24cv-05763. Here is the Complaint.
An earlier case filed by the Libertarian Party was dismissed on standing grounds. The new case shores up defenses against that happening again. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Mark H. Cohen, who also handled the last case.
