On March 29, the Illinois House passed HB 2009, which restricts who can be an independent candidate. The vote was 75-38. The bill says if anyone ran for any partisan office in the primary and lost, he or she cannot run for any partisan office in the general election under a different designation. Also, anyone who won a partisan primary but withdrew cannot then run under a different designation for any partisan office in November.

The vote does not seem to have been based on partisanship. The 38 “No” votes included 24 Democrats and 14 Republicans. The Democrats who voted “No” are: Acevedo, Arroyo, Berrios, Daniel Burke, Burns, Chapa LaVia, Crespo, Currie, Farnham, Ford, Franks, Gabel, Greg Harris, Jefferson, Lang, Mayfield, McCarthy, Mendoza, Mussman, Osterman, Soto, Turner, Williams, and Yarbrough.

The Republicans who voted “no” are: Barickman, Brown, Coladipietro, Eddy, Hammond, David Harris, Kay, Bill Mitchell, Reboletti, Reis, Rose, Rosenthal, Roth, Sacia.

On March 29, the Idaho House passed HB 275, 65-2. It makes many election law changes, including two ballot access improvements. It lowers the number of signatures for an independent presidential candidate from 1% of the last presidential vote (about 6,000 signatures) to exactly 1,000. It also says that out-of-state circulators may circulate an independent presidential candidate petition.

Assuming this bill also passes the Senate, Idaho will have the easiest procedure for an independent presidential candidate that it has ever had. Before 1977 Idaho had no procedure for an independent presidential candidate to get on the ballot. Idaho is one of the states that independent presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy sued, to force them to create procedures for independent presidential candidates. McCarthy won all of these lawsuits. However, most states that he sued reacted by passing procedures that were very difficult. For instance, New Mexico passed a procedure in 1977 requiring independent presidential candidates to submit a petition of 3% of the last vote, whereas at the time minor parties only needed 100 signatures. Texas passed a procedure requiring independent presidential candidates to get approximately 40% more signatures than independent candidates for other statewide office need. Oklahoma passed a procedure requiring an independent presidential candidate to submit a petition of 3% of the last presidential vote, whereas independent candidates for other office didn’t need any signatures. Idaho passed a procedure requiring an independent presidential candidate to submit 1% of the last presidential vote, when other statewide independent candidates only needed 1,000 signatures.

North Dakota is the only state that has no voter registration. North Dakota’s election law says indications of voter support for initiatives and for some candidates depend on how many people live in the state, instead of how many registered voters there are in the state. For example, candidates running in a primary for state legislature need the support of 1% of the population of that district (this covers both petitions to get on a primary ballot, and also the minimum number of votes needed in the primary for the candidate to advance to the November ballot).

Initiative petitions need the signatures of 2% of the state’s population.

Because the 2010 census shows that North Dakota’s population increased 4.7% compared to 2000, all those election law numerical requirements will now rise 4.7%, for the period covering the next ten years. North Dakota’s Secretary of State says the increase applies immediately, even to initiatives that are currently circulating.