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.

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.

On February 23, California election officials explained for the first time why Peta Lindsay can’t be on the Peace & Freedom Party presidential primary ballot. The Secretary of State instructed county elections officials to tell the Lindsay campaign that she may not appear on the presidential primary ballot because she is under age 35. Lindsay campaign officials tried to pick up petition blanks to add her to the ballot by petition, but county elections officials refused to release the forms.

The Secretary of State still has not explained why she won’t print Stephen Durham on the PFP presidential primary ballot. There is no allegation that he doesn’t meet the constitutional qualifications, yet the Secretary of State won’t print his name on the PFP ballot either. However, no election official seems to be blocking Stephen Durham’s ability to collect the signatures of 1% of PFP registrants, and to get on the ballot that way.

Peta Lindsay is the presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Stephen Durham is the presidential nominee of the Freedom Socialist Party. Because neither of those two parties is ballot-qualified in California, they are both seeking the presidential nomination of the Peace & Freedom Party, which is ballot-qualified.