On May 9, the Tennessee Senate passed HB 794 by a vote of 24-9. This is the bill that makes only slight improvements in ballot access for new and minor parties. The bill deletes the requirement that the petition say that the signers are members. It moves the petition deadline from March to early April. But it leaves the same number of signatures that the old law required, 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote, which would be 40,042 signatures in 2012.

Last year, a U.S. District Court in Tennessee invalidated the old law. The decision says, concerning deadlines, “The 6th Circuit cited and relied upon decisions in other Circuits and district courts holding State deadlines of 60 days and 90 days prior to a primary as creating burdens for minor political parties and voters. 462 F.3d at 586 (citing Council of Alternative Parties v Hooks), 121 F.3d 876,880 (3d Cir. 1997)(60 days deadline before primary an undue burden because ‘the election is remote and voters were generally uninterested in the campaign.’))…Other district courts in this Circuit have stricken state deadlines for lesser periods of time than Tennessee’s 120 days deadline. See Libertarian Party of Kentucky v Ehrler, 776 F.Supp. 1200, 1205-06 (E.D. Ky. 1991)(holding deadline of 119 prior to the primary an unconstitutional burden on voters and minor political parties); Cripps v Seneca Co. Bd. of Elections, 629 F.Supp. 1335, 1338 (N.D. Ohio 1985)(deadline of 75 days before the primary for independent candidates violates the First Amendment).”

The Tennessee bill still leaves a deadline of 120 days between the petition deadline and the August primary, so the bill, if signed into law, will still be unconstitutional.

Pennsylvania holds partisan primaries on May 17, 2011, including partisan judicial races. In Philadelphia, according to this story, Anita Smith is on the Democratic primary for Municipal Court Judge even though she is not an attorney. Pennsylvania law requires judges to be attorneys, but no one challenged her petition.

On May 3, the Colorado House passed SB 189, and on May 5, the Senate concurred in the House amendments, so the bill is now through the legislature. The bill moves the non-presidential primary from the 2nd Tuesday in August, to the last Tuesday in June. Unfortunately, the bill was amended to make all petition deadlines for new parties and independent candidates earlier than they had been.

The new deadline for an independent presidential candidate (or the presidential nominee of an unqualified party) moves from 140 days before the general election, to 155 days before the general election. Assuming the bill is signed, the 2012 deadline will be June 4. Colorado already had the nation’s second-earliest deadline for independent presidential candidates (only Texas is earlier) and the new deadline would probably be unconstitutional if challenged in court. Other states in which later independent candidate deadlines have been held unconstitutional are Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and South Dakota. Ironically, the current Secretary of State of Colorado, Scott Gessler, was in private practice as an attorney before he was elected Secretary of State, and in 2004 he won a lawsuit on behalf of Socialist Party presidential candidate Walt Brown over the former Secretary of State’s refusal to accept Brown’s paperwork on July 4. Brown had slid the paperwork under the Secretary of State’s locked door on that date, which was the deadline, but the former Secretary of State had refused to accept it. Gessler won a state court order that Brown should be put on the ballot.

The bill also moves the petition deadline for a new party to the second Friday in January. Generally, newly-qualifying parties do not nominate by convention, although if two candidates for the same office received a significant vote at the newly-qualifying party’s convention, state law does provide for a primary for that party for just that one office. Such primaries are extremely rare in Colorado. The bill also moves the petition deadline for non-presidential independents to 155 days before the general election, and says that the nominating conventions of ballot-qualified minor parties must be no later than 73 days before the primary.