Nevada SB 53, which would have moved the declaration of candidacy deadline for all types of candidates except presidential nominees from March to February, failed to make any headway, and it is now too late for it to pass.
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The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, has this article about the history of alternative political parties in Wisconsin history. The Capital Times is a weekly print publication and also a daily on-line newspaper.
For many years, Gallup Polls has been asking voters if they self-identify as a Democrat, Republican, or independent. The figures for the March 2023 poll show independents at 49%, Republicans at 25%, and Democrats at 25%. See here. That is the highest share choosing “independent” ever recorded by the poll.
On April 17, four organizations filed a single amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, in Libertarian Party of New York v New York State Board of Elections, 22-893. The amicus is on the side of the parties that filed the lawsuit. The lawsuit concerns the 2020 changes to New York ballot access laws. The changes tripled the number of signatures for statewide independents and the nominees of unqualified parties. They increased the distribution requirement. They did not relax the six-week petitioning period. Finally, the changes stiffened the definition of a qualified party from a group that polled 50,000 votes for Governor, to one that polled 2% for the office at the top of the ballot every two years (president in presidential years and governor in gubernatorial years).
The four organizations are the Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE), the Forward Party, Open Primaries, and the Rainey Center. Here is the brief. It is only 16 pages; I hope readers will read it. It makes the point that some of the most important third parties in U.S. history were one-state parties that had no desire to run a presidential nominee.
On April 17, the Montana House State Administration Committee defeated HB 565 by 10-8. However, there are procedures to ask for a re-vote, and there are also procedures for the entire House to take up the bill even though it had been defeated in Committee. HB 565 is the bill that increases petition requirements for new parties, independent candidates, and independent presidential candidates, and also raises the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot.
The other bill, SB 566, for top-two, was postponed until Wednesday, April 19.
The previous blog post said that the top-two bill had been amended from just affecting the U.S. Senate race in 2024, to include all the statewide offices. However the amendment would put the other statewide offices into the top-two system after 2024, not in 2024.