On Marh 25, a California state trial court ruled that voters who sign petitions for candidates must fill out the address blank personally. If the petition signer lets someone else fill in the address, the signature is invalid. Calhoon v Weber, 26WM000063, Sacramento Superior Court. As a result, the plaintiff, Earnest Rey Calhoon, will not be on the ballot for Assembly, 79th district.
The tentative candidate list issued by the California Secretary of State reveals that there are eight Assembly districts in which only one person filed to be on the June 2 primary ballot. Therefore, in those eight districts, a candidate who files as a declared write-in candidate has a chance to appear on the November ballot. All the write-in candidate needs to do is out-poll any other primary write-in candidate.
The eight Assembly districts are: 4,8,17,22,32,54,61 and 63.
On March 25, the California Supreme Court refused to hear Gilbert v The Superior Court of Sacramento County, S295810. This is the challenge to the Secretary of State’s policy that she cannot examine the constitutional qualifications of candidates for Governor.
On March 25, an Arizona state trial court judge ruled that political parties have no right to change their names. If they want to change their names, they must follow the procedures for a new party, including a petition. Arizona Clean Elections Commission v Fontes, Maricopa County Superior Court, cv 2025-064149. Here is the seven-page opinion.
The opinion makes no mention of the many other states that have allowed parties to change their names. The opinion does not discuss the problem that if a party wants to change its name and submits a petition as though it were a new organization, the old party would still remain on the ballot as long as enough people were registered into the old party (two-thirds of 1%).
The case came about because No Labels Party decided to change its name to the Arizona Independent Party. If the Arizona Independent Party were to petition as a new party, it would face the handicap that its old essence would still be on the ballot, so the party under its new name would be forced to compete against its former self, under the old name.
The decision says nothing about whether a party can have the word “independent” in its name. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who had sued the Secretary of State over his decision to allow the name change, had argued that even if parties can change their name, the name change “Arizona Independent” could not be allowed because use of the word “independent” would cause confusion.
Presumably No Labels is still on the ballot and its registrants will be converted back to No Labels registrants. Filing for the party’s primary had already closed (except for write-in declarations of candidacy) and the party has quite a few candidates for federal and state office. UPDATE: this story says the party will appeal, but that the Secretary of State will not appeal.
On March 25, Wisconsin AB 223 was given to Governor Tony Evers. The bill bans out-of-state circulators for candidate petitions (except for presidential petitions). The Governor must act on the bill by April 1. The bill also bans out-of-state circulators for recall petitions. It is somewhat likely that the Governor will veto the bill. Wisconsin is in the Seventh Circuit, and the Seventh Circuit ruled in 2000 in Krislov v Rednour, 226 F.3d 851, that bans on out-of-state circulators are unconstitutional.
