On April 23, Yahoo!, The Huffington Post, and Slate, jointly announced that they will sponsor two primary season presidential debates, one for Republicans and one for Democrats. These will be on-line debates, probably in September 2007. They will be restricted to candidates who have announced their candidacies, and they will probably also be restricted to those Republican and Democratic presidential candidates who have been accepted by those parties as “legitimate.” In recent decades, the two major parties have been in the habit of compiling a list of “legitimate” candidates, those who are invited into party-sponsored debates. Generally one needs to be, or have been, a federal office-holder or a Governor to get onto this list, although Wesley Clark and Al Sharpton made it onto the Democratic list in 2004.

On August 23, Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle, a Republican, vetoed SB 1956. It would have provided that Hawaii join the proposed compact of states that would appoint presidential electors pledged to the presidential candidate who got the most popular votes nationwide.

It is conceivable that the legislature will override her veto.

On April 23, the Arizona House passed SB 1430 on a voice vote. Technically, the bill hasn’t passed the House yet; it passed “Committee of the Whole”, which is slightly different than passing the House itself. However, it is extremely likely it will pass on Tuesday, April 24.

The bill moves the primary from mid-September to early September. Because independent candidate petitions deadlines, even for president, are the same day that Democrats and Republicans file to get on the primary ballot, the effect of moving the primary to an earlier date, is to make independent candidate petition deadlines earlier. Arizona already had the 2nd earliest petition deadline for independent presidential candidates of any state (only Texas is worse). The new deadline will be in late May in some years, and the first week in June in other years, depending on that year’s particular calendar.

Nader’s challenge to that deadline is pending in the 9th circuit.
The bill also has the effect of moving the petition for a new party to an earlier date, from mid-March to early March. The bill’s lead sponsor, Senator Karen Johnson, had promised several months ago that she would do nothing to make ballot access more difficult. However, she did not keep her word.