Law professor Eugene Volokh has this commentary about the January 23 decision of the Tenth Circuit, Riddle v Hickenlooper. That decision struck down Colorado’s law that lets contributors give twice as much money to a candidate nominated in a primary (i.e., Democrats and Republicans) than to a minor party, independent, or write-in candidate. Thanks to Jon Roland for the link.
The Republican National Committee decision to require all primaries to be in May or an earlier month does not apply to California, New Jersey, and New Mexico. Those states have June presidential primaries and all three states have Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature. The Republican Party apparently feels it is too difficult to persuade those three states to move their presidential primaries to an earlier date. See this story.
On January 24, the Republican National Committee approved the changes in the presidential nominating process that the party’s Rules Committees had adopted the day before. See this story. The date of the 2016 national convention isn’t set yet, but the article suggests it is most likely to be in June 2016. The date will be set in April 2014.
Former Congressman Mickey Edwards has this op-ed in the New York Times, condemning “sore loser” laws. “Sore loser” is actually a term that has come to represent any election law that keeps an otherwise qualified candidate off the general election ballot because he or she was too closely associated with a qualified political party. The term includes not only candidates who run in a partisan primary and lose; it also includes candidates who want to be independent candidates in November but can’t be because they were registered as a member of a qualified party in the recent past; and it also includes laws that force all candidates for a particular office to file on the same deadline, and forces them to choose whether to run in a partisan primary or to file as an independent for the November election.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a Michigan Libertarian Party appeal against Michigan’s “sore loser” law as applied to presidential primaries. If the Edwards op-ed had run in the New York Times a few months earlier, conceivably that might have helped persuade the Court to hear the case.
On January 23, the Republican National Committee’s Rules Committee passed some changes to the party’s presidential nomination process. The rules require that all delegates must have been chosen by 45 days before the start of the convention. Because it is expected that the next Republican national convention will be in June or July, this change means that presidential primaries in June cannot be used to choose delegates.
The date of the convention itself won’t be set for several more months.
It will be interesting to see what the Republican Party does about states that hold presidential primaries in June, especially the populous states of New Jersey and California. Republican legislators may try to move the primary dates, although both of those two states have Democratic majorities in the legislature. Otherwise Republicans in those two states will choose delegates via caucuses, and the presidential primaries will just be beauty contests. See this story. The full Republican National Committee will decide on January 24 whether to accept the recommendations of the Rules Committee.
