Hawaii State Senator Karl Rhoads (D-Honolulu) has introduced SB 2392, to ban insurrectionists from running for public office. Hawaii has no presidential primaries, so as applied to presidential candidates, the bill would only affect the general election.
Not that Trump’s absence from the ballot there would affect his electability, given how heavily Democratic Hawaii is.
On January 16, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph F. Anderson, a Reagan appointee, explained why he orally kept Cenk Uygur off the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary when the case was argued. Here is the 17-page decision in Uygur v South Carolina, 3:23cv-6879.
Uygur, who was born in Turkey, had argued that the Fourteenth Amendment, Equal Protecdtion Clause, had silently repealed the Provision of Article II that requires presidents to be “natural born.” Thanks to Electionlawblog for this news.
The Mississippi Democratic presidential primary ballot only lists President Joe Biden. No other Democrat submitted the needed 500 signatures. Florida and Mississippi are the only states in which only Biden qualified. Florida cancels primaries when only one candidate qualifies, but Mississippi will go ahead with its Democratic primary. Although there is a write-in space on that ballot, state law says write-ins are only counted if a candidate whose name is on the ballot has died.
On January 22, David Scanlan, New Hampshire Secretary of State, told Andrew Volinsky that election officials will tally write-in votes for “ceasefire” in both the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. Volinsky wrote a letter to the editor of the Concord Monitor on December 13, 2023, which was printed. He says he is so eager for a ceasefire in Gaza that he intends to “vote” for it.
The letter has received a lot of attention and now there is a website urging New Hampshire voters to write-in “ceasefire” for president on primary day, January 23.
New Hampshire is one of the few states that permits write-in votes and doesn’t have a declaration of candidacy procedure for write-ins. Traditionally, the state tallies write-ins for candidates who receive a fairly significant number of votes, whether they are running or not. For instance, the state customarily tallies the number of Republican write-ins for prominent Democratic candidates running for president in the Democratic primary, and vice versa.
On December 15, the filing deadline for Louisiana presidential primaries passed. Candidates needed a filing fee of $750. Among the eight Democratic presidential primary candidates who filed is Cenk Uygur, who was born in Turkey. The other Democrats are Joe Biden, Rob Ely, Frank Lozada, Stephen Lyons, Armando Serrato, Dean Phillips, and Marianne Williamson.
Nine Republicans filed: Ryan Binkley, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Vivek Ramaswamy, David Stuckenberg, Rachel Swift, and Donald Trump.
On January 19, the Kansas Secretary of State announced that four candidates had filed for the Republican presidential primary, and also four had filed for the Democratic presidential primary. Candidates needed a $10,000 filing fee to get on the ballot.
Republicans are Ryan Binkley, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Donald Trump.
Democrats are Joe Biden, Jason Palmer, Dean Phillips, and Marianne Williamson.
The primary is March 19.