On May 21, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray addressed an interim meeting of the Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisons Committee. He again wants the legislature to increase the independent candidate petition from 2% of the last U.S. House vote, to 3% for statewide races and 5% for district races. See this story. Wyoming already has the nation’s highest percentage for independent presidential candidates. Although Indiana also has a 2% requirement, Indiana’s law fixes the 2% denominator on a race that is only up in midterm years, when the turnout is lower. Wyoming’s requirement has the “see-saw” effect, in which the requirement is effectively much higher in midterm years, because it is based on the high-turnout presidential years.

On May 28, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey postponed the primary candidate filing deadline for U.S. House in districts 1,2,6 and 7. See this story.

Glenn Rogers, a columnist for the Dallas Morning News, has this column, explaining the Texas ballot access laws for independent candidates and criticizing them.

One point he failed to make is that before 1967, Texas did not require any petition for new or minor parties to get on the ballot. They merely needed to hold a state convention and county conventions in at least twenty counties. Yet Texas did not have crowded ballots before 1967. Texas never had a government-printed general ballot with more than six parties.

Rogers is mistaken to say George Washington hated political parties. Washington criticized “the spirit of party”, i.e., partisanship. Washington was head of the Federalist Party during his administration, but he was careful to have cabinet members from both parties. The chief division between the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party in the 1790’s was over foreign policy. The Federalist Party was horrified by the French Revolution, but the Democratic-Republican Party was not.