On March 28, the Hawaii Senate Ways & Means Committee passed HB 1481, which would institute a program of public funding for candidates for state house of representatives. Here is a copy of the bill, although it may not be the latest version. The bill had passed the House on March 5. It does not discriminate for or against any candidate on the basis of partisan affiliation.
According to this story, Geovanni Regalado, who is on the May 14 ballot for Mayor of Passaic, New Jersey, has filed a lawsuit to remove his name. The law says he should have withdrawn 60 days before the election, but he argues the law is not mandatory.
On April 3, the Montana Senate State Administration Committee passed HB 120, which makes two ballot access improvements. It permits independent presidential and vice-presidential candidates to be on the November ballot, even if they had some association with a qualified political party in the preceding period; (2) it moves the non-presidential independent petition deadline from March to May.
In 2012, two states had petition deadlines for either newly-qualifying parties or independent candidates declared unconstitutional. Those two states were California and Montana. Whereas the Montana legislature is correcting the invalid law, there is no bill in the California legislature to repair the unconstitutional filing deadline in California.
On April 2, St. Louis, Missouri, held partisan elections for Mayor, Comptroller, and 14 Alderman races. The only parties that nominated any candidates for the citywide offices were the Democratic Party and the Green Party. Here are the unofficial returns, although they don’t show party labels. Nevertheless, party labels were on the ballot. The Green citywide nominees were: Mayor James McNeely 15.54%; Comptroller Jerome Bauer 15.00%.
For the fourteen alderman races, the Greens had two nominees and the Republican Party had one. The Green results for Alderman were: Ward 7 alderman David Gordon 23.02%; Ward 9 alderman Susie Parker 16.62%. The only Republican nominee, running in Ward 23, was Robert Crump, who received 13.37%.
The St. Louis Green Party is ballot-qualified and has its own primary. In its March 5 primary, only about 120 voters participated. The St. Louis Green Party is not affiliated with the national Green Party. Jill Stein was not on the ballot in Missouri in November 2012.
The Greenville News has this story about the attempts by some leaders of the South Carolina Republican Party to nominate by convention in 2014. State law says any party is free to decide for itself whether to nominate by primary or convention. But, state law also says that if a party wants to switch to convention nomination, it can only make the change if 75% of the delegates to the state convention vote for that change. South Carolina’s ballot-qualified minor parties always nominate by convention, but the Republican Party hasn’t nominated by convention for important statewide office since the late 1970’s.
Party leaders who favor nomination by convention for 2014 say what they really want is a closed Republican primary, which would require the state to start asking voters to choose a party on voter registration forms. However, the state legislature won’t pass a bill to do that. The party also has a lawsuit pending in federal court to obtain a closed primary for itself.
