The Ohio Senate is scheduled to pass HB 194 on Thursday, June 23. This is an omnibus election law bill backed by the Secretary of State. It moves the primary from March to May. Existing law says the primary in presidential years, for all office, is in March (although in midterm years it is already in May).

HB 194 also moves the deadline for a new party to submit its petition from 120 days before the primary, to 90 days before the primary. Therefore, assuming the bill is signed into law, the 2012 primary will be May 8, and the petition deadline will be February 8. No reported decision of any court has ever upheld a petition deadline for a new party, or an independent candidate, that early, so the new law will almost certainly be held unconstitutional. Early petition deadlines for new parties, or for independent candidates, have been held unconstitutional in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio itself, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah. Decisions on early deadlines will probably be issued this year in Montana and Vermont. Also, injunctions against early petition deadlines for new parties have been issued in Hawaii and Idaho, although neither case then received a decision on declaratory judgment.

The Ohio legislature seems unaware of this large body of constitutional law. The existing Ohio deadline of November in the odd year before the election was invalidated by the 6th circuit in 2006, and HB 194 is intended to replace the old law. But, assuming HB 194 is signed into law, it will trigger a new lawsuit. HB 194 does not lower the number of signatures to place a new party on the ballot, nor does it lower the number of votes for a party to remain ballot-qualified, nor does it ease the wording on the party petition which says that the signers intend to participate in the new party’s primary.

The Ohio legislature ought to pass a procedure that enables a newly-qualifying party to nominate by convention. Ohio parties were permitted to nominate by convention in the period before 1947 and to have a party label on the ballot next to the names of their nominees. Also, the American Independent Party nominated by convention in Ohio in 1968, and 1996, and the Socialist Labor Party nominated by convention in 1970, and the Reform Party nominated by convention in 1996. Ohio therefore has a fair amount of experience with letting newly-qualified parties nominate by convention. However, it is true that the legislature would need to set in motion a change in the Ohio Constitution in order to make this policy change, because Ohio is one of two states with a state constitutional provision requiring primaries for all parties.

Maine Governor Paul LePage signed LD 1376 on June 21. This is the bill to repeal same-day voter registration. However, according to this story, groups who support same-day voter registration probably have the resources to circulate a petition, requesting a referendum vote on the issue. If the petition succeeds, the bill will not go into effect until a popular vote is held, either in June 2012 or November 2012.

Same-day voter registration is useful because it prevents the need for provisional ballots.

The California Assembly Elections Committee had been scheduled to hear SB 205 on June 21, but the hearing on that particular bill has been postponed until July 5. SB 205 makes it illegal to pay people to gather voter registrations, if the worker is paid on a per-signature basis. The reason for the postponement was that the bill’s author, Senator Lou Correa, could not attend the hearing.

Because the only remaining method in California for parties to remain on the ballot is to have at least 103,004 registered members, SB 205 will be very damaging to minor parties, especially the Libertarian Party, and the Peace & Freedom Party, because those two parties are now below the threshold. Those two parties, along with the Green Party, and the Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE), have already notified the Assembly Elections Committee that they oppose the bill.

The bill is also damaging to newly qualifying parties, because they also need 103,004 registrations, or else 1,030,040 valid signatures, to get on the ballot. The only party that is making a substantial effort to qualify for 2012, so far, is Americans Elect, which is using the 1,030,040 petition method. No bill pending in the legislature makes it illegal to pay people on a per-signature basis to work on a petition to qualify a new party. However, a bill is moving ahead to make it illegal to pay people on a per-signature basis to work on an initiative, referendum or recall petition. That bill, SB 168, passed the Assembly Elections Committee on June 21. The Committee also passed SB 448, to force circulators of initiative, referendum and recall petitions to wear large buttons telling whether they are paid or not.