On April 4, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed SB 277, which makes it easier for a newly-qualifying party to get on the ballot. This is the first bill anywhere in the U.S. this year that improves ballot access and which has become law.
The North Dakota House expects to vote on HB 1273 on Monday, April 10. This is the bill that bans approval voting and ranked choice voting. Governor Doug Burgum had vetoed it, and the House will vote on whether or not to override his veto.
So far this year, there have been four vetoes of any North Dakota bills, and the House has overridden two of them.
On March 30, Idaho Governor Little signed HB 138, which moves the presidential primary from March to May. The bill has no effect on any filing deadlines for independent candidates or new parties. Thanks to Tony Roza for this news. UPDATE: Additional legislation may be needed in a special session to actually implement the May presidential primary, because HB 138 didn’t fill in the gaps on how to hold the presidential primary.
This Ohio news story refers to the No Labels petition for qualified party status in Ohio. The title says the party recently filed for party status, but actually the party submitted its petition months ago, and the counties have slowly been validating the petition. No Labels submitted more than twice the number of signatures required. The news story quotes Frank LaRose, Ohio Secretary of State, as saying the petition seems to have a slightly worse validity rate than similar petitions. If the petition-checking process still isn’t finished, it isn’t clear what triggered the news story.
On April 7, the New York state government asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a time extension, for its response to Libertarian Party of New York v New York State Board of Elections, 22-893. Assuming the court grants the request (and it always does grant such requests), the state’s response will be due May 16. UPDATE: on April 10 the Court did grant the time extension.
