On April 4, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed SB 1501 and SB 1599. They make it somewhat easier for parties to remain ballot-qualified. Earlier this year the legislature had passed a bill to automatically register every adult citizen known to exist, unless the individual declines. The effect of that bill is to vastly increase the number of registered voters who have not yet chosen to be a registered member of a party. Because parties stay on the ballot if they have a certain share of the voters registered as members, that registration change made it more difficult for parties to qualify. So the new laws change the method of calculating percentages, to exclude those new automatic voters. But the change is only temporary and expires after the 2018 election.

New York’s presidential primary is April 19. According to this story, the State Board is getting approximately 100 phone complaints per day from voters who are too late to register into either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, so as to be able to vote in those parties’ presidential primaries. New York easily has the nation’s most restrictive time limits on when voters can join a party if they wish to vote in an upcoming primary.

The federal lawsuit over whether the Maine Libertarian Party can be on the ballot in 2016 convened for a second day of testimony and argument on April 5. This newspaper story describes the hearing. It reveals that the main reason the party’s registration drive had so many rejected cards is because the applicants had poor handwriting.