On Wednesday, February 17, at 11 a.m., the Oklahoma Senate Rules Committee will hear SB 896, which lowers the vote percentage for a group to be considered a political party, from 10% to 2.5%. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for this news.
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According to this story, Pennsylvania election officials have rejected Willie Wilson’s petition to be listed on the Democratic presidential primary. The state says he has fewer than 2,000 signatures. Wilson is from Chicago and has qualified for Democratic presidential primary ballots in California, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas.
Wilson tried and failed in two states so far this year, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
On February 15, the New Mexico House Judiciary Committee tabled HJR 12, the proposed state constitutional amendment that said independent voters may vote in partisan primaries. See this story. Thanks to Rick Lass for the link.
New Mexico major party political leaders act as though they don’t realize that the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 said that parties decide for themselves whether to let independents vote in their primaries, and state laws cannot set that policy for any party.
Martin O’Malley has withdrawn his name from the Maryland Democratic presidential primary, and Robert H. Heller, Jr., has withdrawn his name from the Maryland Republican presidential primary. But other Republicans who have announced that they are no longer running have not bothered to withdraw their names from Maryland’s primary, including Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum.
The pattern seems to be that when major party presidential candidates end their campaigns, they only act to remove their names (if it isn’t too late) from the ballot of their home state, but they don’t exert the effort to withdraw from other states’ presidential primaries.
On February 16, filing for the Pennsylvania presidential primaries closed. All candidates need petitions to get on the ballot. A presidential candidate needs 2,000 signatures on his or her own petition, and additional petitions for delegates.
The Pennsylvania Elections Department has this list of presidential candidates who filed petitions. Republicans who filed are Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump. Democrats are Hillary Clinton, Rocky De La Fuente, Bernie Sanders, and Willie Wilson.
An earlier version of this post said that John Kasich did not file a petition, but that was based on an incomplete list from the Pennsylvania Elections Department. Kasich was added to the list at about 6:30 p.m. eastern time.