Late at night on May 24, the Texas House passed SB 100 on second reading, after amending it. The bill, as amended, retains the primary in March, but moves the runoff primary from April to May. Because the petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates is tied to the date of the runoff primary, the bill has the effect of moving the petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates from early May to June 21, 2012.

The presidential independent petition deadline, however, is not tied to the date of the runoff primary, so it remains on May 14, 2012. Texas already easily had the nation’s earliest independent presidential petition deadline; ever since 1987 it has been the only state with a petition deadline earlier than June. If any independent presidential candidate brings a lawsuit to challenge the May independent presidential deadline, Texas will be hard-pressed to explain why the independent presidential deadline should be 38 days earlier than the petition deadline for non-presidential independents.

Under the bill, newly qualifying parties are still required to tell the state that they expect to petition on or before January 2, 2012. But, the deadline for non-presidential independent candidates moves to December 12, 2011. If this bill passes, Texas is the only state that will have ever required independent candidates to notify the government that they intend to run, in the odd year before the election. Candidates (for office other than President) seeking the nomination of a party also will need to file a declaration no later than December 12, 2011, if SB 100 passes. Thanks to Jim Riley for details about the bill.

On May 24, the Ohio Senate passed SB 148 by a vote of 23-10. Like a somewhat similar bill that has passed the house, HB 194, it attempts to fix the old ballot access law that was held unconstitutional in 2006.

SB 148 cuts the number of signatures in half, from 1% of the last vote cast, to one-half of 1% of the last vote cast. Thus, it is better than HB 194, which does not lower the number of signatures. For 2012, if SB 148 were signed into law, the requirement would be 19,263 valid signatures. However, the petition deadline would be 100 days before the primary, which is still unconstitutional. The bill does not attempt to move the primary, so in 2012 the primary would be March 6 and the deadline would be the day after Thanksgiving this year.

The bill has a silly provision that says only half the signatures would be due in late November of the year before the election, and the other half would be due in early December of the year before the election. The original version of SB 148 had a special, much later deadline for parties that only want to run for President (80 days before the general election), but that idea was deleted from the bill before it passed the Senate.