On May 7, New Paltz, Ulster County, New York, held elections for village office. The elections are partisan, but the village parties are not permitted to be the same as the state qualified parties. Two seats were up for Village Board. Only two candidates appeared on the ballot, Tom Rocco with the label Responsive Government Party, and Jonathan Cohen of the Common Sense Party. They are registered Democrats.

Two Green Party members had petitioned to be on the ballot, but their petitions were challenged, so they ran write-in campaigns. Rebecca Rotzler won as a write-in, defeating one of the ballot-listed candidates. See this story. If Rotzler had been on the ballot, her party label would have been Innovation Party. She was not permitted to be on the ballot as a Green, because the Green Party is ballot-qualified in the state. She had also been elected to the Village Board in 2003. At that time, the Green Party was not ballot-qualified, so when she won in 2003, she was listed as a Green. Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for this news.

On May 8, the North Carolina House Elections Committee voted to alter HB 794, the ballot access reform bill, into a study bill. The Committee then passed the bill without opposition. Assuming it is signed into law, the legislature will study ballot access for minor parties and independent candidates before February 2014. This means public hearings will be held, and the joint committee will issue a report. The second half of the current session will then use the study results to decide whether to pass the original bill.

The bill lowers the number of signatures for statewide independent candidates and newly-qualifying parties from approximately 90,000 signatures to approximately 11,000. Thanks to Jordon Greene for this information.

On May 7, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman signed LB 349, which, among other things, repeals the primary screen-out for independent presidential petitions. Now, Texas is the only state that bars primary voters from signing a ballot access petition. In Texas, primary voters can’t sign for an independent candidate for any office, nor can they sign for a newly-qualifying party.

At one time eleven states had primary screen-outs, but one by one they have all been repealed, except in Texas. Such laws once existed in Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and West Virginia.