Utah Republican Party officials, including the state chair, say they are thinking of setting up procedures to interview individuals who want to appear on Republican primary ballots. See this story.
4
In March 2015, South Dakota made its ballot access laws worse. SB 69 moved the petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties from March 29 to March 1; said no one can independent candidate petitions if they are registered into a qualified party; increased the number of signatures for major party members to get on a party primary ballot, and made their deadlines earlier as well.
Also in the 2015 session, the legislature passed a controversial bill limiting the voter-approved measure to increase the minimum wage. The legislature passed a bill saying the increase doesn’t apply to persons under age 18.
The AFL-CIO and other groups are angry about the minimum wage bill, so they started a petition to put a repeal of that law on the November 2016 ballot. When referendum petitions get enough valid signatures, the new law passed by the legislature is suspended until the public votes. Because the AFL-CIO is doing one referendum petition on the minimum wage, it decided it might as well do a second referendum petition at the same time, to ask the voters to repeal SB 69. The AFL-CIO is mostly interested in fighting SB 69 because it has a disproportionate effect on Democrats who want to run in the Democratic primary. SB 69 increased their primary petitions from 1% of the last vote for their party nominee for Governor to 1% of the registered voters in that party.
The referendum petitions began to circulate earlier this month. Thanks to Jackie Salit and Harry Kresky for this information.
On April 18, the Arizona State Republican Executive Committee defeated a proposal to try to stop independent voters from voting in Republican primaries. State law says independents may vote in any party’s primary. Some Republican Party officers had urged the state party to sue to overturn that law as applied to the Republican Party, but the idea was rejected. See this story.
Fox and Hounds Daily, a prominent California politics blog, has this commentary by Richard Winger on California AB 372, the bill to require write-in candidates in the primary to pay a large filing fee if they get enough votes to appear on the November ballot.
On April 7, many Illinois local governments held elections. Two Green Party members were re-elected, and one was elected. Peter Schwartzman was re-elected as Alderman, ward five, in Galesburg. He faced an opponent. Galesburg is in west central Illinois.
The other two Greens ran unopposed. Steve Alesch was re-elected Warrenville Park Commissioner. Adrian Frost was elected to the Plano Library Board. No one was on the ballot and he was the only announced candidate, and won with eleven write-ins. Warrenville and Plano are suburbs of Chicago. Thanks to Independent Political Report for this news.