On March 30, the Maine Joint Veterans & Legal Affairs Committee postponed LD 769 until next year. It changes the definition of a qualified party. Current law says it is a group that has 5,000 registered members, but after four years on the ballot, it must have 10,000. The bill would have deleted the reference to 10,000.

Current law is nonsensical. If a group goes off the ballot because it has fewer than 10,000 registered members, the state must let it keep its registered members, per a court decision last year. And a newly-disqualified party could immediately re-qualify as a new party with its 5,000 registrants.

On March 30, Arkansas SB 277 passed the State Senate. It had passed the House on March 27. It eases procedures for newly-qualifying parties. The number of signatures drops from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote (about 27,000 signatures) to exactly 10,000 signatures. The petition can now circulate starting on January 1 of any odd year. It is due three weeks before the primary, which is in May in midterm years and March in presidential years. That expands the petitioning period to sixteen months in midterm years, and fourteen months in presidential years. Formerly the petition had to be completed in 90 days, and the group chose its own 90-day period. Formerly the filing deadline was four months before the primary.

Also the newly-qualifying party need not submit the names of its nominees until primary day (the names of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees are due much later, in September of the election year).

Only four legislators voted against the bill: Senator Jim Dotson (R-Bentonville), Senator Fredrick Love (D-Mabelvale), Representative Mark Berry (R-Ozark), Representative Josh Miller (R-Heber Springs).

On March 9, Florida state prison authorities reversed a ban on letting subscriber inmates see the January 30, 2023 issue of The Militant. That issue had been banned in one particular prison because of an article about a nurses’ strike in New York, and an article about protests in Iran.

The Militant is the weekly print newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party. It is the only remaining weekly print publication published by any political party in the U.S. See this article for the details about the Florida incident.