Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson is the author of SB 1430, which moves the Arizona non-presidential primary from mid-September to early September. The bill has already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. Johnson will try to amend her own bill on the Senate floor to improve the Arizona independent candidate deadline. For president, Arizona has the 2nd earliest independent deadline in the nation. The current Arizona deadline is in early June; only Texas has an earlier deadline.

On January 30, fourteen Pennsylvania Representatives introduced HB 48, which says that write-in votes are void if they are cast for a candidate who was removed from the ballot because his or her petition was insufficient. The sponsors include 8 Democrats and 6 Republicans. The Democrats include Babette Josephs, chair of the committee that will hear the bill (the Committee on State Government).

The bill seems to contradict a 1905 decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Oughton v Black, 61 A 346. On page 348, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that the state constitutional provision that elections be “equal” would be violated if voters were not permitted to write-in anyone they please. The Court said, if write-ins were restricted, “the election (as to the voter who cast a write-in vote) would not be equal, for he would not be able to express his own individual will in his own way.”