On May 7, the New York state legislature passed A9407, which extends the petitioning period for primary petitions from 37 days to 42 days. However, the bill only applies to 2014. The bill says that the such petitions can start to circulate on May 29, instead of June 3. The bill had been introduced on April 25. Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it on May 10.

The reason for the bill is that one of the Jewish holidays falls during the normal petitioning period. See this story. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

On May 9, the Arizona Green Party filed this supplemental brief in Arizona Green Party v Bennett, 2:14cv-375. The issue is the constitutionality of the state’s February petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties. A decision is likely from the U.S. District Court at any time.

California Assemblymember Richard Gordon expects the Assembly to vote on AB 2351 on Thursday, May 15. This is the bill to re-define “political party”. It moves the vote test (2% for any statewide office, in a midterm year) from the general election to the primary election. It also eases the alternate registration test for a party to be ballot-qualified, from 1% of the last gubernatorial vote (currently 103,004 registrants) to .33% of the total number of registered voters (currently 58,280 registrants).