On April 5, the Forward Party restated its position on the presidential election in 2024. It will not run anyone for president. See the press release here. Thanks to Frank Morano for the link.
26
On March 23, the Idaho legislature passed HB 138, which moves the presidential primary from March to late May.
On April 3, the Kansas House defeated HB 2053, which would have reinstated presidential primaries in Kansas. The main reason for its defeat was the election-administration cost. Kansas will therefore continue to use caucuses to select delegates to major party presidential conventions.
On March 30, the New Hampshire Election Law Committee appears to have killed SB 133. The Committee had earlier passed it, but seems to have recalled the bill back into the committee, meaning it won’t get a floor vote. It would have moved the date of the non-presidential primary from September to June.
The bill indirectly hurt ballot access, because the deadline for an independent candidate, or the nominee of an unqualified party, to file a declaration of candidacy, and to submit a petition, is tied to the date of the non-presidential primary. The bill would have moved the petition deadline from August to May. And it would have moved the declaration of candidacy deadline from June to March. Even independent presidential candidates must file such declarations, so a March deadline would have severely hampered the ability of a presidential candidate to enter the general election in the spring or summer of the election year.
This year, legislatures in Montana, Minnesota and Texas are threatening to pass bills making it far more difficult for a ballot-qualified party to remain on the ballot, and making the new requirement go into effect before the 2024 election. This is shocking behavior. It has long been the custom that when a state makes it more difficult for a ballot-qualified party to remain on the ballot, the change does not take effect until after the next election, to give any affected party a chance to try to meet the new requirement.
The Minnesota and Texas bills raise the vote test to 10%, and the Montana bill raises it to 5% of the number of registered voters. The Minnesota bill would eliminate the Legal Marijuana Now Party; the Montana bill would eliminate the Libertarian and Green Parties; the Texas bill would eliminate the Green Party immediately although the Libertarian Party would remain on the ballot for a few more elections because the Libertarian Party polled over 10% for a statewide race in 2018.
Here is a link to an unreported order of a U.S. District Court in the southern district of Ohio, from 2014. It grants injunctive relief to the Ohio Libertarian Party, to keep it on the ballot in 2014. The legislature in late 2013 had passed a bill removing the Libertarian, Green, Socialist and Constitution Parties from the 2014 ballot unless they did a new, severe petition, but the judge said that due process required making that change effective after the 2014 election, not before.
BAN is posting this court order so it will be a resource for activists trying to fight the Minnesota, Montana and Texas bills.
Until 2023, the last states that had removed a party from the ballot effective before the next election had been Alabama in 1982 and Arkansas in 1971. But the U.S. Justice Department countermanded the Alabama effective date, and a U.S. District Court in Arkansas struck down the 1971 law, several years afterwards. A 3-judge U.S. District Court in Michigan had prevented Michigan from making a hostile change immediately in 1976, and that decision is not only reported, it was summarily affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hudler v Austin, 49 F.Supp.1002 (e.d.Mich 1976), 430 U.S. 924 (1977).