On March 2, the New York State Senate passed SB 6604 by 34-26. It combines the congressional primary with the primary for state and local office, and sets that primary date on the third Tuesday of August. This year, that would be August 16. Current law has the congressional primary in June and the state/local primary in September. The presidential primary is in April.

SB 6604 moves the petition deadline for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, from August to July 26. Although that is unfortunate, SB 6604 is far more benevolent to independent candidates than the bill the Assembly has already passed, AB 9108, which moves the petition deadline to early June.

The bill would take effect this year. If the legislature does pass a bill setting the petition deadline on June 7, and says it is effective this year, that would create due process problems. There are many legal precedents that say states cannot impose tougher ballot access restrictions right in the middle of election season. Alabama added a new petition requirement for minor parties in 1982, but the U.S. Justice Department refused to allow the change to take effect for the 1982 election. Kansas doubled the statewide independent petition in 1990 from 2,500 signatures to 5,000 signatures, but the Secretary of State ruled that increase couldn’t go into effect in 1990. Michigan in 1988 required a petition for independent candidates, but a federal court ruled in Fulani v Austin that the petition could not be implemented for the 1988 election. Wyoming in 1984 added a petition requirement for new parties, but the 10th circuit said since the new procedure allowed one year to collect the signatures, but only two months remained in 1984 to get the job done, the state had to reduce the petition requirement for 1984 only, to one-sixth the normal number of signatures.

Usually, when states pass laws making ballot access more difficult, they don’t try to make the new restriction effective immediately.

The Independent Party is entitled to nominate by primary, the first party in Oregon to have a government-adminstered primary since the Progressive Party had one in 1914. Oregon election officials plan to also provide the party with a presidential primary. It isn’t clear yet whether there will be any candidates’ names on that presidential primary. Either the party will be permitted to have presidential candidates’ names that have been suggested by the party, or else the ballot won’t have any names and the outcome will be decided by write-in votes.

The Rock Island Argus, a daily newspaper in Illinois, editorializes here that the recent federal court decision invalidating one Illinois ballot access restriction may be just the beginning of improvements in that state’s ballot access laws.

Illinois badly needs ballot access reform. It is one of only eleven states that has no procedure for a group to become a qualified party in advance of any particular election. Its candidate petitions for district office, for both independents and the nominees of unqualified parties, are the second highest in the nation, after Georgia. Illinois is the only populous state in which it is common for half the legislative races to have only one candidate on the November ballot.