On January 29, the Utah Senate passed SB 107, which moves the petition deadline for independent candidates from January to June 15. On February 12, it passed the House Rules Committee.
As far as is known, this is the first bill to ease ballot access restrictions that has made any headway so far this year. The bill is a result of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s federal lawsuit.
USA Today columnist Ingrid Jacques here advocates that No Labels nominate Nikki Haley for president and Dean Phillips for vice-president.
On February 13, the Tennessee Libertarian Party filed this brief in Darnell v Hargett, m.d., 3:23cv-1266. This is the lawsuit filed to overturn the requirements for a group to get on the ballot as a party. The brief emphasizes that the Sixth Circuit struck down Michigan’s statewide independent petition of 30,000 signatures in 2021, in Graveline v Benson. Both Michigan and Tennessee are in the Sixth Circuit, so the Graveline decision is precedent for this lawsuit. The Tennessee party petition is 43,498 signatures this year (2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote).
Although the Forward Party is not ballot-qualified in Virginia, it recently qualified to have any nominees it may have this year use the party label. In Virginia, there is no petition to create a ballot-qualified party. Instead there are only candidate petitions. The candidates may use their party label only if that party has shown that it has a state committee with a representative from each U.S. House district. The State Board of Elections has determined that the Forward Party has such a committee.
This status is only useful if the party has any successful petitioning candidates this year. In Virginia, in even-years, there are no regularly-scheduled elections for state office, but there are for Congress. Presumably the Forward Party will have some congressional candidates this year; otherwise there would have been no point in getting the right to use a party label.
Although Virginia has some partisan county and city elections, there are no party labels in those elections.
On February 5, Utah filed this brief in defense of its law that prohibits paying initiative petition circulators on a per-signature basis. Maxfield v Henderson, 4:23cv-112. The state also defends its law that requires initiative circulators to wear a badge that says if they are being paid or not. The badge does not identify the circulator.
