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.
In California, a “political body” is a group that has expressed intent to qualify as a party using a voter registration drive. The Secretary of State’s website always lists such groups. On April 7 the Secretary of State finally added No Labels to its list. The party had requested political body status two weeks ago. Here is the Secretary of State’s list.
The Billings Gazette has this op-ed opposing SB 566, which would use a top-two system for just one office in 2024, U.S. Senate. The op-ed is also signed by Sid Daoud, the chair of the Montana Libertarian Party, and Gary Buchanan, the only independent candidate who was on the ballot for any congressional race in Montana in 2022.
