Five Washington State Senators have introduced SB 5225, which requires primary candidates to submit a petition along with the 1% (of the annual salary) filing fee. Currently candidates for Congress and partisan state office don’t need signatures to get on the primary ballot.

The bill requires 1,000 signatures for statewide office; 750 for U.S. House; and 500 for state legislature. Here is the text.

Washington has a top-two system, and there are always many candidates on the primary ballot for Governor and U.S. Senator. Sometimes there are as many as thirty.

The sponsors are four Democrats (Marko Liias, T’wina Nobles, Marcus Riccelli, and Sharon Shewmake) and one Republican (Drew MacEwen).

Three South Carolina Representatives have introduce HB 3557, which would require that candidates nominated in convention must pay filing fees. The authors are Brandon Newton (R-Lancaster), Fawn Pedalino (R-Manning), and Bill Taylor (R-Aiken).

The U.S. Supreme Court said in Lubin v Panish (1974) that filing fees are unconstitutional unless they are needed for the purpose of keeping ballots from being too crowded. There is no problem with crowded primary ballots when parties nominate by convention. South Carolina lets each party decide for itself whether to nominate by primary or convention, but the two major parties always use primaries and all the minor parties always use conventions.

On January 30, the New Jersey legislature passed AB 5117, which increases the number of signatures for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties. The Governor signed it on February 3. The bill passed on a party-line vote in each house, with Democrats supporting it and Republicans opposed.