On Saturday, March 7, the New Mexico House Government, Elections and Indian Affairs Committee defeated HB 346 on a tie vote. See this story. The bill would have moved the primary for president and all other office from June to March.
The bill would have provided much earlier petition deadlines for minor party and independent candidate petitions, because New Mexico ties the petition deadlines to the date of the primary. Thanks to Josh Putnam for the link.
Two Oregon Democratic Representatives have introduced HB 3297. It would change Oregon ballots, for candidates who have the nomination of more than one party. Under current law, when a candidate is the nominee of more than one party, that candidate is only listed once on the general election ballot. The candidate’s name is followed by the names of all parties that have nominated him or her.
The bill would provide that when a candidate has the nomination of more than one party, his or her name would be listed separately for each party. This would give general election voters a choice of which party to support. This type of fusion is referred to as “disaggregated fusion.” States that use disaggregated fusion already are New York, Connecticut, and South Carolina.
The bill’s sponsors are Peter Buckley of Ashland, and Barbara Smith Warner of Portland. The Working Families Party asked for this bill.
On March 7, the Kentucky Republican Party kept the idea of using a caucus, instead of a presidential primary, alive, although the idea still hasn’t been approved. See this story.
This story says the Kentucky Republican Party doesn’t want to switch from a presidential primary to a caucus, unless the party can construct a method for overseas military voters to participate in a caucus.
On March 5, the California Republican Party filed a federal lawsuit against the Asian American Small Business PAC, charging that the PAC sent campaign literature on behalf of a Republican running in the March 17 State Senate special election, district 7. The complaint is that the campaign literature uses the party’s elephant logo, even though the candidate, Michaela Hertle, is not endorsed by the Republican Party. Here is the complaint in the case, which was filed in the eastern district, 2:15cv-505.
The Republican National Committee trademarked its logo in 1969, according to the Complaint.
When the Washington state top-two case, Washington State Republican Party v Washington State Grange, was heard in the Ninth Circuit after being remanded by the U.S. Supreme Court, the lower federal courts said the Lanham Act doesn’t apply to political party names and symbols. The Lanham Act is the federal law concerning trademark infringement.
