Illinois is currently one of the few states in which a qualified party can nominate someone after the primary is over, if no one won that party’s nomination in the primary. But an election law bill that is expected to pass has just been amended to delete the ability of parties to nominate someone after the primary is over.

SB 172 was introduced on January 23, 2013, and it passed the Illinois Senate on November 19, 2014. It passed the House Executive Committee on December 1, 2014, but was amended to delete the election code sections on how parties nominate after the primary is over. This bill, if passed, would then be presented to the outgoing Democratic Governor, Pat Quinn, not to incoming Republican Governor-elect Bruce Rauner. It seems that the motivation for the bill is to reduce the number of Republican nominees for the legislature from Chicago. In recent years, the Republican Party in Chicago has had trouble placing candidates on its own primary ballot in many parts of Chicago, so the Republicans tend to nominate candidates after the primary is over. Thanks to Phil Huckelberry for the news.

On December 2, U.S. Senator Rand Paul formally announced that he will seek re-election to the Senate in 2016. See this story. He has not formally said he is running for President in 2016.

According to a CNN/ORC poll released December 2, for the Republican presidential nomination, Paul is tied for sixth place, behind Mitt Romney, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, and tied with Paul Ryan. Thanks to Darryl Perry for the link to Paul announcement, and to PoliticalWire for the link to the poll.

UPDATE: here is a detailed analysis of Paul’s election law strategy if he runs for president simultaneously with running for re-election to the U.S. Senate.

On June 26, 2014, Douglas Campbell, state chair of the Colorado Constitution Party, died. This is somewhat old news but it has just now come to the attention of B.A.N. Campbell won one of the most significant lawsuits in the nation’s history over Article One and the constitutional qualifications to run for Congress in 1999, Campbell v Davidson.

Campbell said he was conscientiously opposed to registering to vote. Nevertheless, he wanted to run for Congress in 1998 as the nominee of the Constitution Party (which was then called the U.S. Taxpapers Party). He petitioned successfully but was still kept off the ballot because the law required all ballot-listed candidates to be registered to vote. He persuaded a U.S. District Court, and then then Tenth Circuit, that a state law requiring candidates for Congress to be registered voters violates the principle set forth in U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, which is the U.S. Supreme Court 1995 decision that said states can’t add to the constitutional qualifications for Congress and therefore state term limits laws for Congress are void.

Colorado appealed its loss in the Campbell case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The cites for Campbell v Davidson are 46 F.Supp.2d 1115 (1999), 233 F.3d 1229 (2000), and 532 U.S. 973 (2000). Since the Campbell decisions, similar lawsuits were won in the Ninth Circuit by Michael Schaefer, and somewhat parallel decisions in the Fifth and Second Circuits.

There are other state ballot access restrictions that violate U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, particularly laws in a few states that require candidates for Congress to have been registered in a certain way. But the only ballot access laws that have ever been struck down on Article One grounds are term limits laws and laws requiring voter registration and/or residency. Campbell showed a great deal of courage in bringing his lawsuit. He had to face the ridicule that comes when voters hear that a candidate wants to be elected, yet refuses himself to register to vote. When he sued, he had no precedents directly on his side. His victory is probably the most significant constitutional election law decision ever won by a member of the Constitution Party. Campbell lived in Arvada, Colorado, and was age 68.