New Mexico is another state in which redistricting is tied up in court. New Mexico has cases pending in both state court and federal court, for the legislative district boundaries. See this story.
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Rhode Island requires presidential candidates to submit 1,000 valid signatures in order to be listed on a presidential primary ballot. Five Republicans turned in enough signatures to be listed: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum. President Obama is the only person who qualified for the Democratic ballot. The primary will be on April 24.
On February 13, U.S. District Court Judge Dora Irizarry asked the Chief Judge of the 2nd Circuit to appoint a 3-judge court which would have the authority to draw U.S. House district boundaries, and also state legislative district boundaries, for New York state. The case is Favors v Cuomo, 11-cv-5632, eastern district. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news. UPDATE: see this story.
According to this story, Jon Green, organizer for the Connecticut Green Party for the last decade, will be leaving Connecticut and will work on getting Working Families Parties on the ballot in states that don’t now have such a party. The Working Families Party has been on the ballot in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont, at one time or another. However, its Delaware and Massachusetts units have gone off the ballot.
Two new election law bills in Arizona are: (1) SB 1429, which would abolish the presidential primary, but wouldn’t take effect until 2016; and (2) SB 1449, which would change the recall process to the system used in Wisconsin. The effect of filing a valid recall petition would be to force a special election for that particular office, and the incumbent being recalled would be a candidate in the special election if he or she wished. As in Wisconsin, there would be a partisan special primary election followed by a partisan special general election. Thanks to Frontloading HQ for the news about the presidential primary bill.
There seems to be no Arizona bill to provide that all qualified parties should be listed on the voter registration form. Last year the legislature passed a law that says only the two largest parties should be listed on the form. Voters who wanted to register into any other party, even a qualified party, would need to write it in. The Libertarian and Green Parties sued against that new law, and on February 13 the state answered the complaint and seems ready to defend the existing law.