The Illinois State Board of Elections has a meeting on July 9. One of the items dealt with will be the ballot status of Jay Keeven, the only Republican running for State Reprsentative, 112th district. He got on the ballot by submitting a petition, under the old Illinois law procedure for candidates who want a party nomination after the March primary is over. Assuming the party didn’t nominate anyone in the primary, the old law let a party nominate someone by meeting if the candidate had submitted the same number of signatures after the primary that would have been needed if he had petitioned earlier for the primary.

Governor J.B. Pritzger signed SB 2412, the bill that repealed that procedure, on May 3, the day after Keevan submitted his petition. There are many court decisions and administrative decisions that say states cannot make ballot access rules worse in the middle of the petition season, and expect to have those changes take effect immediately. See this story.

The Florida Secretary of State’s website now lists the Natural Law Party a a qualified party.  The name of the party is “Florida Natural Law.”  Most counties in Florida don’t print the full party name on the ballot.  The Secretary of State abbreviation for the Natural Law Party is “Nat”.  The No Labels Party abbreviation is “NLP.”

The state says the Reform Party has not filed to be re-recognized.  It had been removed in 2023.

Following up on Richard Winger’s post yesterday about this bill, here is a commentary from the Illinois Policy Institute.

And, here is a link to my Chicago Tribune oped of July 10, 2023 on the ballot access barriers to third party and independent candidates in Illinois. All 118 Illinois House and 59 Illinois Senate seats were on the November 2022 ballot in Illinois. There were zero independent and zero third party candidates in all 177 of those elections.