On February 18, the Vermont House passed S117, the bill to move the primary from September to August. Unfortunately the House also amended the bill to move the petition deadline for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, from September, to the second Thursday after the first Monday in June. In 2010, that would be June 17.

S117 passed the Senate last year, so now the bill returns to the Senate. The date change is certainly unconstitutional as to presidential independent petitions, and almost certainly unconstitutional for candidates for other office as well. The ostensible change, from September to June, is to prevent “sore losers”. However, if the only state interest is to outlaw “sore losers”, the sensible approach is not to move the deadline ahead three months, but to simply say that someone who runs in a primary and loses is not eligible to be on the general election ballot by petition.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Anderson v Celebrezze in 1983 that independent presidential candidate petition deadlines in the first half of the year are unconstitutional. Except for an oddly deviant decision from Texas in 2004 (Nader v Connor), no state has won declaratory judgment for any independent presidential petition deadline that is earlier than July 15, since before 1983.

For office other than president, courts have ruled that independent petition deadlines cannot be earlier than primary day. Such decisions have been won in Alabama, Alaska, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina.

On February 22, the Colorado House Judiciary Committee unanimously passed HB 1271, the bill to shorten the prior registration period for independent candidates. Existing law says no one can be an independent candidate if that person was a registered member of any qualified party, for even one day, in the 17 months before the election. The bill shortens that to January 1 of an election year.

On February 22, the San Diego County Taxpayers Association issued an 8-page analysis of California’s Proposition 14, the top-two election measure. The Association is neutral on the measure.

Back in November 2004, when another top-two open primary ballot measure was on the California ballot, the San Diego County Taxpayers Association supported that measure, Proposition 62. The Association does not explicitly say why it no longer supports this concept. However, the analysis points out the differences between Proposition 62 and Proposition 14: (1) general election write-ins were permitted under Proposition 62 but not permitted under Proposition 14; (2) Proposition 62 lowered the registration requirement for parties to remain ballot-qualified, but Proposition 14 does not, thereby indirectly making it much more difficult for parties to remain ballot-qualified (because the 2% vote test wouldn’t function any longer, because parties would no longer have nominees in midterm years).