On January 28, the Illinois Supreme Court issued an order putting a Republican candidate for the Illinois legislature back on the ballot. Cynthia Hebda is a Republican running for State House, 59th district, which includes part of Lake County and part of Cook County. Before she decided to run, she had signed the petition to place incumbent Carole Sente on the Democratic primary ballot. The fact that she signed a petition for someone in the Democratic primary was used in the lower courts to remove her from the Republican ballot.

Hebda said she signed for Sente because they are friends. A Cook County Circuit Court had then removed Hebda from the Republican ballot on January 7, and the State Court of Appeals then agreed with the lower court. But, the State Supreme Court has reversed the two lower courts.

The ballots had already been printed with Hebda’s name on the ballot, but notices at early voting polling places had said that Hebda is not eligible to be a candidate and that votes cast for her would not be counted. See this story. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.

Illinois voter registration forms do not ask voters to choose a party. However, Illinois recognizes that voters are party members, depending on which party’s primary ballot they choose. A record is kept of which party’s primary ballot a voter chooses, and someone who chooses a Republican primary ballot is treated as a member of the Republican Party. Similarly, if a voter signs a petition to place a candidate on a party primary ballot, that voter is also treated as though he or she is a member of that party. So, when Hebda signed a primary petition for a Democrat, the law deemed her to be a Democrat, and thus ineligible to run in a Republican primary. Illinois and Ohio are the two states which don’t have registration by party on the voter registration, and yet which try to classify voters as party members depending on what actions they take. They results of the Illinois/Ohio system create many ambiguous legal problems. It will be fortunate if the Illinois Supreme Court, having issued injunctive relief to Hebda, will also write a decision clarifying Illinois law.

The Arizona Secretary of State has released new registration data here. It is as of January 1, 2010. Since the October 1, 2009 tally, Republicans have lost 5,168 registrants, Democrats have lost 7,020 registrants, Libertarians have gained 798 registrants, and independents have gained 9,001 registrants.

Arizona has stopped tallying Green Party registrants, and all Greens are now lumped in with independents. The data in the paragraph above this paragraph is based on the assumption that Green registration since October 2009 has not changed. It was 4,237 in October 2009. Of course it has probably changed slightly, but the data is unavailable, so that is the best approximation that can be made.

On January 28, the South Carolina Senate passed SB 590, after amending it in committee. The bill makes ballot access changes for independent candidates. Some of the changes are beneficial and some are restrictive.

The bill lowers the number of signatures for a statewide independent, and for a U.S. House independent, from 10,000 signatures to 4,000. For state legislature and county office, the petition would be lowered from 5% of the registered voters to 3%.

On the other hand, the bill imposes a primary screen-out. If anyone signs the petition and then votes in a primary that same year, the signature is void.

Also, the bill says that signatures may not be collected more than six months before the petition deadline. The petition deadline remains July 15. Also, the bill says that no one may sign for more than one independent candidate. And, the bill says independent candidates must file a declaration of candidacy no later than primary day. Finally, the bill says that no one may sign an independent candidate’s petition unless he or she had been registered for at least 30 days.

Parts of the bill would be held unconstitutional. In 1970 the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed a 3-judge U.S. District Court opinion that said that it is unconstitutional to restrict newly-registered voters from signing a petition. Also, the part of the bill that requires an independent candidate to file a declaration of candidacy by the primary date would not be constitutional as applied to independent presidential candidates. South Carolina presidential primaries are very early, and in 2008 were in January. Anderson v Celebrezze, a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision, said state laws requiring independent presidential candidates to declare earlier than the summer of a presidential election year are unconstitutional.

The bill now goes to the South Carolina House.