On December 8, 2023, California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, Ph.D. issued an advisory to County Clerks and Registrars of Voters of that state’s list of “Generally Recognized Presidential Candidates. The list contains the names of the candidates that the Secretary of State intends to place on the ballot at the March 5, 2024, Presidential Primary Election. The Secretary of State has determined that these candidates met the “generally advocated for or recognized” criteria as set forth in Elections Code section 6000.1.”

This may be just a preliminary list of candidates.

Here is the California Secretary of State Advisory.

Indiana law required candidates running in a political party’s primary election to have voted in the last two primaries for that party or get the permission of his or her’s county chair to run in a primary. John Rust met neither of those criteria, so he sued the state of Indiana in Marion County Court. On Thursday, December 7, 2023, the judge ruled that law to be unconstitutional in violation of the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution.

This ruling does not place Rust on the GOP primary ballot automatically, as petition signatures must be gathered and other requirements met. Still, this is an important victory for the people of Indiana and future candidates for public office.

Here is the Marion County, Indiana court decision.

On December 7, Utah state officials agreed to accept independent presidential petitions at least as late as March 5. The state filed a stipulation in the lawsuit Maxfield v Henderson, 4:23cv-112. The statutory deadline has been in early January since 2022, although before 2022 the deadline had been in August of election years.

The lawsuit had been filed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and some voters who support him.