A Vermont Superior Court will hear oral argument in Trudell v Markowitz, 612-8-10-WN, on February 3. This is the case that challenges Vermont’s new early petition deadline for independent candidate petitions. Last year the legislature moved the deadline from September to June. At the same time, the legislature moved the primary from September to August.

The plaintiff, Paul Trudell, had tried to be an independent candidate last year for U.S. House of Representatives. He would have appeared on the ballot if the deadline had not been moved. Courts in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, have all ruled that independent candidate petitions (for office other than president) cannot be earlier than primary day, or the day before the primary. There are no contrary precedents, except that in Washington state the 9th circuit refused to strike down a deadline that was a month earlier than the primary, but that decision was based on the fact that no plaintiff-candidate in that lawsuit had been injured by the early deadline.

Two South Carolina State Senators have introduced S282, which changes the mandatory size of ballot access petitions from 8.5-inch by 14-inch paper, to 8.5 inch by 11 inch paper. This is a worthwhile idea, because candidates and parties have trouble distributing petition blanks via the internet to their supporters at home, because most home printers can’t cope with 14-inch paper very well. The sponsors are Senator Tom Davis (R-Beaufort) and Senator Michael Rose (R-Summerville).

The Nevada Secretary of State has asked the legislature to pass A81, a bill that has many proposed election law changes. The legislature doesn’t convene until February. The bill increases the filing fees. Currently, the fees for U.S. Senate are $500; for U.S. House and Governor, $300; for other statewide state offices $200; for legislature and partisan county office, $100.

The bill would require these higher fees: for U.S. Senate, $3,000; for U.S. House and Governor, $2,000; for other statewide state offices $1,500; for legislature and partisan county office, $300. The bill also says that candidates who swear they cannot afford these fees are permitted to submit a petition in lieu of filing fees, in which one signature equals one dollar, so that a poor candidate for U.S. Senate, for example, would need 3,000 signatures in lieu of paying the fee.

The bill also moves the petition deadline for a full-fledged new political party to April. If one reads the bill, the new deadline appears to be in May, but another section of the law, not being amended, says the real deadline to submit the petitions to the counties is five weeks before the deadline for putting the signatures in the hands of the Secretary of State. Thus the effective deadline would be in April. This proposal is odd, because in 1986 a U.S. District Court in Libertarian Party of Nevada v Swackhamer, 638 F.Supp. 565, that an April petition deadline for new parties is unconstitutionally early. And back then, new parties nominated by primary. Nowadays they nominate by convention, so there is even less reason for a deadline that early.