North Carolina HB 509, the bill to ease ballot access for newly-qualifying parties and independent candidates, has 28 sponsors. This link lists them. They include nine Republicans, eighteen Democrats, and the one independent in the House. The House has 120 members.
Canada will hold a Parliamentary election on October 19, 2015. This story says the leader of the Liberal Party favors letting the Green Party into this year’s debates. The leaders of the other two major parties have not yet expressed an opinion.
This article describes a talk given by Greg Orman recently on his experience running as an independent for U.S. Senate in Kansas last year.
On April 8, the Third Circuit issued this 13-page opinion in Balsam v Guadagno, 14-3882. Plaintiffs are New Jersey voters who argued that the state’s closed primary system is unconstitutional and should be abolished. Some of the voters are registered independents, and some are Democrats or Republicans who say they only register into those parties so they can vote in the primaries of those parties, but they would rather be registered independents.
The Third Circuit relies on past precedents to find that the U.S. Constitution does not prevent states from holding closed primaries. The decision says that even if the New Jersey Constitution does have provisions that might protect independent voters, federal courts cannot strike down laws on grounds that the law violates the State Constitution unless the state waives its sovereign immunity, and that New Jersey has not waived its immunity.
On April 6, the Texas House Elections Committee passed HB 464, which requires candidates nominated in convention to pay filing fees. The vote was 5-1. Traditionally, in Texas, filing fees have only been required for candidates running in partisan primaries, and the money is used to help administer the primaries. The bill says the fees paid by convention nominees would go into the general state treasury.
If this bill is signed into law, the number of people who run for office as Libertarians or Greens will probably become much smaller. Texas has 165 legislative elections every two years (150 house seats and 15 state senate seats). Every year, a majority of districts have only one major party candidate. In November 2014, 110 of the 165 districts had only one major party candidate. The Libertarian and Green Parties run many candidates, thus giving voters a choice of more than one candidate in most legislative districts. HB 464 will inevitably mean that a majority of legislative districts will have only one candidate on the November ballot. Thanks to Jim Riley for the news about the bill.
