On February 18, the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee passed four bills that say that when a government elections office misinforms a candidate about how many signatures are needed, the candidate can get extra time to get more signatures. However, the bills only relate to candidates for judicial offices. They are SB 21 (for candidates for Judge of the Circuit Court), SB 22 (Judge of the District Court), SB 23 (Judge of Probate Court) and SB 24 (Judge of Municipal Court). Thanks to Bill Hall for this news.

The U.S. Supreme Court will ponder whether to hear Arizona’s ballot access appeal at its March 6 conference. Results won’t be released to the public until March 9. It is always possible the Court will be undecided on March 6, so there won’t necessarily be any news on March 9 about the case. The issues are Arizona’s ban on out-of-state circulators, and whether early June is too early to require independent presidential petitions to be submitted.

The State’s briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court so far insist that there is a conflict between the 9th circuit, and the Arizona Supreme Court, on the constitutionality of an early June petition deadline. The state is wrong to say that. The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the June 29, 2000 deadline in a case filed by Harry Browne in 2000. Some years later, the Arizona legislature made the deadline even earlier, so that the independent deadline in 2008 was June 4. A June 4 deadline is significantly different than a June 29 deadline.

According to this newspaper story of February 16, New York city Mayor Mike Bloomberg is working hard to win permission to enter the Republican Party primary when he runs for re-election this year. The story also says he is interested in the Working Families nomination.

In a related development, according to this February 17 newspaper story, Bloomberg has given $1,200,000 to the Independence Party in the last six months. See the 4th paragraph.