December 14 was the deadline for presidential primary candidates in Arizona. Fourteen Republicans qualified; see the list here, from the Secretary of State’s web page. Candidates were put on automatically if they could show they were already on the presidential primary ballot of at least two other states. George Pataki qualified, but Jim Gilmore did not apply, even though he could have easily qualified, because he is on in Florida, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
In California, a group that wants to qualify as a political body can do that, by persuading approximately 60,000 persons to register into the group. A group using that method must tell the Secretary of State that it intends to qualify. Then, the Secretary of State tells the county election officials to keep track of the number of registrants in that group.
In March 2015, the Independent Party notified the California Secretary of State that it wishes to qualify. The Secretary of State rejected the filing, on the grounds that the name “Independent Party” is too similar to the American Independent Party, which has been on the ballot since 1968. The California law says “The designated name shall not be so similar to the name of an existing party so as to mislead the voters, and shall not conflict with that of any existing party or political body that has previously filed notice.”
However, recently the California Secretary of State accepted a filing from a different group that is the “Independent California Party”, and (as reported earlier) this year the Secretary of State accepted a filing from a group called the American Freedom Party.
The Independent Party has been trying to find an attorney to sue the Secretary of State for some time.
December 14 was the deadline for presidential primary candidates to file in Texas. Thirteen Republicans and eight Democrats qualified. The most crowded Texas Republican Party presidential primary in the past had been twelve candidates in 1996.
Democrats had to either pay $2,500 or submit 5,000 signatures of registered voters. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who qualified by petition instead of by filing fee.
Republicans had to either pay $5,000 ot submit 10,800 signatures. All the Republicans who qualified paid the fee. See this story. Thanks to Jim Riley for the complete list.
Republican Party rules say that on the first ballot, at the national convention’s vote for President, delegates must vote for the candidate they said they would vote for when they were elected. But, according to this article at FrontloadingHQ, if a delegate disobeys, his or her vote still counts.
On December 14, former New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran was sentenced to 30 days in jail, and ordered to make restitution. See this story. Duran was the first Republican ever elected Secretary of State. She was elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. While she was Secretary of State, she reversed a favorable precedent made by her predecessors, concerning how a party remains on the ballot. The former Secretaries of State had interpreted election code section 1-7-2.C to mean that a party remains on the ballot unless it fails the one-half of 1% vote test two elections in a row. But she interpreted it to remove a party from the ballot as soon as it fails the vote test the first time. Thanks to Mike Fellows for the link.
