Arizona law says that independent voters may choose any party’s primary ballot, but that law doesn’t apply to the presidential primaries. According to this story, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, advocates that independents also be allowed to vote in presidential primaries.
On March 23, the South Dakota Constitution Party and the South Dakota Libertarian Party filed this brief in their ballot access lawsuit. The case challenges the March 29 petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties who want to be recognized. Last month the state responded to this case by saying that parties that just want to be on the ballot for President and most of the statewide state executive positions need not file their petition for party status until July 11. The state then argued that the March 29 deadline is valid, for parties that want to run for the other partisan positions, Congress, Governor, and Legislature.
In response, the parties argue that the Constitution protects the ability of people to organize a new party in the spring of an election year, and that such a new party should be allowed to run for all offices, not just some of them.
Professor Elaine Karmarck has this article for the Brookings Institution, on whether it is too late for an independent presidential candidate to emerge at the time of the national Republican convention. The article seems wholly accurate, yet incomplete. It does not discuss the idea that a group interested in keeping its options open could be petitioning now to qualify a new political party. In 39 states, the petition to qualify a new party need not indicate who the presidential nominee is, so that work could be going on now even before the backers have decided whether to run a candidate, or who that candidate would be.
The New York Times has published Eugene Puryear’s submission on the rights of protestors at campaign events, in the “Room for Debate”
column.
Puryear is the vice-presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation this year, although the New York Times does not mention that. Thanks to Independent Political Report for this news.
On March 23, the Oklahoma House Elections & Ethics Committee unanimously passed SB 896. It changes the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot from 10% of the vote for the office at the top of the ticket, to 2.5%. The bill was amended to take effect on November 1, 2016, instead of January 1, 2017, so assuming it passes the House soon, it will need to go back to the Senate.
The committee also passed SB 1016, to remove the names of any political parties from the voter registration form, and SB 1108, to remove the names of presidential elector candidates from the November ballot. The purpose of SB 1016 is to eliminate the need to reprint all the forms every time a new party qualifies, or every time one ceases to be qualified. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for this news.
