On February 24, the Utah Senate voted against SB 43 by a vote of 19-9. Utah has been the only state in which it is impossible for anyone to get on a primary ballot unless he or she does well at a party caucus prior to the primary. In 2014 the legislature passed a law saying anyone can petition on to a primary ballot, regardless of what the caucus thought of that person.

SB 43 would have suspended the law passed in 2014. See this story, which says that the bill lost because it seemed unfair to undo the 2014 legislation, even temporarily. The reason it seemed unfair is that the 2014 bill passed in the face of a proposed initiative to make the same change. The initiative proponents withdrew their petition because the 2014 legislature made the change.

Texas Representative Kenneth Sheets (R-Texas) has introduced HB 25. It retains the straight-ticket device in general, but removes partisan judicial races from the scope of the device. The other Texas bills concerning straight-ticket devices are: (1) HB 1288, which completely eliminates it; (2) HB 1444, which removes it for judicial offices in counties with over 1,000,000 population. Thanks to Jim Riley for this news.

On February 17, the Illinois State Court of Appeals, 5th district, ruled that a candidate’s ballot access petition is valid if it comes close to having enough valid signatures. Jackson-Hicks v East St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners, 5-15-0028. The incumbent Mayor of East St. Louis, Alvin Parks, is running for re-election this month, and even though the Board determined that he needed 136 signatures and only had 123 valid signatures, it still left him on the ballot.

One of the mayor’s opponents sued the Board to have the Mayor removed from the ballot, but on January 19 the trial court kept him on the ballot, and now the State Appeals Court has agreed. The person who challenged the Mayor’s petition plans to ask the State Supreme Court to reverse the decision. Mayor Parks had said if he had been removed from the ballot, he would have been a write-in candidate. Thanks to Andy Finko for this news. Here is the opinion.