Peter Schrag, a veteran reporter and columnist for the Sacramento Bee, has this column, suggesting Proposition 14, the California top-two measure, may disappoint its backers. His column does not say anything about the effect of Proposition 14 on voters who are members and supporters of minor parties.
March 15 was the deadline for candidates in Maine primaries to file petitions. Four Democrats and six Republicans submitted petitions. See this story.
On March 15, Senator Kevin Raye, the President of the Maine Senate, introduced LD 1882, a bill to create a presidential primary starting in 2016. Maine in the past has not had a presidential primary and has used caucuses instead, except it did have presidential primaries in 1996 and 2000.
The bill says the political parties that want a presidential primary could set the date of the presidential primary, but if they can’t agree, the primaries would be a week later than New Hampshire’s presidential primaries. Candidates would be put on the presidential primary automatically if they are discussed in the news media. There seems to be nothing in the bill that would prevent the Green Party from having a presidential primary. See this story.
On March 14, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman signed LB759, which repeals the ban on out-of-state petition circulators. This appears to be the first ballot access improvement bill that has been signed into law so far this year.
On March 14, the Arizona Senate Government Reform Committee passed HB 2480, after first stripping out all the original contents of the bill (which concerned health insurance), and substituting some election law provisions. They require the national committee of a qualified political party to submit signed statements by the party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees, under penalty of perjury, that the candidates meet the constitutional qualifications. This submission would accompany the normal paperwork that national political party officials send to each state, informing that state of the names of that party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The bill, if enacted, would of course apply to the state’s ballot-qualified minor parties as well as the major parties.
The bill’s author, Representative Carl Seel, asked the committee to take this action. If the bill passes the Senate, it will return to the House, because even though the House already passed HB 2480, when the House passed it, it concerned an entirely different subject. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.
