On March 2, a U.S. District Court in Idaho ruled that the Republican Party may prevent people who don’t consider themselves Republican Party members from voting in the Republican primary. See this story. The case is Idaho Republican Party v Ysursa, 08-cv-165. Here is the 20-page decision.
UPDATE: here is some commentary about the decision on Daily Kos.
On March 2, the North Carolina House Election Law and Campaign Finance Reform Committee held an informal hearing on ballot access. The consensus seemed to be that the committee members will write a substitute for HB 32, which will probably require the signatures of either one-fourth of 1%, or one-half of 1%, of the electorate, for new parties and independent candidates to get on the ballot. It is not clear what the base for the signatures will be. If the bill emerges as one-half of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote, that would be 21,345 signatures. The current requirement for 2012 is 85,379 signatures. Thanks to Jordon Greene for this news.
On March 2, the Arizona Senate Government Reform Committee passed HB 2335. The bill says that vice-presidential nominees should have their names on the November ballot. Currently, Arizona and North Dakota are the only states that don’t print the names of vice-presidential nominees on the ballot.
HB 2335 started out as a bill to delete the names of candidates for presidential elector from the November ballot. Arizona has eleven electoral votes starting in 2012, and if there are six slates on the ballot, for example, that involves printing the names of 66 candidates for presidential elector on the ballot. That takes up a lot of room, and most people would probably think the voters don’t care who the presidential elector candidates are. But, after the bill was introduced, it was amended to leave the presidential elector candidates’ names on the ballot.
Mississippi elects all its state offices in the odd years before presidential election years. The state elects eight statewide state officers this year. Filing for party primaries closed on March 1. The Democrats are only running candidates for five of the eight statewide offices, but the Reform Party is running candidates for seven.
The Reform Party candidates for statewide office are: Governor Shawn O’Hara, Lieutenant Governor Tracella Hill, Secretary of State John Pannell, Auditor Ashley Norwood, Treasurer Shawn O’Hara, Insurance Commissioner Barbara Washer, Agriculture Commissioner Cathy Toole. The only statewide office with no Reform Party candidate is Attorney General.
Filing for state legislative seats ends on June 1. The filing deadline is later for legislative candidates this year because redistricting has not been carried out. Thanks to Steve Rankin for this news. None of the other parties filed any candidates for statewide office, other than the Republican Party, of course.
Back on January 7, 2011, the Kentucky Senate passed an interesting bill to move the presidential primary from May to August. It is SB 4. However, it cannot pass, because the House Elections Committee never set it for a hearing, and that Committee doesn’t expect to meet again this year.
