On February 24, the Virginia Senate passed HB 1133, which repeals the law that says circulators can’t work outside their home districts. The bill had already passed the House.
Assuming this bill is signed into law, Virginia will still outlaw out-of-state circulators, although the bill says anyone running for President in either the primary or the general election is free to circulate his or her own petition, even if the presidential candidate is not a Virginia resident.
On February 24, a status conference was held in Libertarian Party of Oklahoma v Zeriax. The case is being expedited and the briefs will all be in by March 9. The hearing on the party’s request for injunctive relief will be on Monday, March 12, in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City.
On February 24, New Mexico Secretary of State Diana J. Durbin noted that New Mexico’s election code does not have any authorization for a straight-ticket device on general election ballots, and she declared “I will follow the law”. Since the law does not provide for a straight-ticket device, she won’t provide for one.
As noted earlier, the legislature this year considered a bill to authorize a straight-ticket device, but that bill didn’t pass and the legislature has since gone home for the year.
Past Secretaries of State in New Mexico have put a straight-ticket device on the ballot, even though there was no authority to do that. The bill considered by the legislature this year would have provided that a straight-ticket device would only be given to parties that had at least two statewide nominees. Minor parties in New Mexico very seldom have as many as two statewide nominees, because even after a convention party is ballot-qualified, the state demands a separate petition for each of its nominees (other than its presidential nominee). For example, in 2012, if any of the ballot-qualified convention parties wanted to have a nominee for U.S. Senate, they would need a petition of 6,018 valid signatures.
The February 27 The New Yorker magazine has this detailed story about Ron Paul, which seems balanced and covers a lot of history.
On February 23, the Missouri House passed SB 773, a bill to move the filing deadline for the non-presidential primary from March 27 to April 24. The bill had already passed the Senate. However, the House amended the bill, and sent the bill back to the Senate. The Senate did not vote on the amended bill, because two Senators engaged in a filibuster, to express their extreme displeasure with a new State Senate redistricting plan. See this story.
