New York still hasn’t decided when to hold presidential primaries in 2024. Josh Putnam has determined that the most likely date will be April 2. Read his analysis here.
In 2020, the New York presidential primaries were on June 23. They were unusually late that year because Governor Andrew Cuomo had cancelled them by executive order, but then a state court ruled he didn’t have the authority to do that, so they were held quite late. In 2016 they were held on April 19.
On April 20, the California Assembly Elections Committee passed AB 1227 unanimously. It lets Santa Clara County use ranked choice voting for elections to elect county officers. The vote was unanimous.
Santa Clara County is the most populous county in northern California. Voters of Santa Clara County approved using RCV in 1998, but it has never been implemented because until 2022, the county’s voting equipment couldn’t handle RCV. But in 2022, the county elections office determined that the voting system software could handle RCV.
On April 19, No Labels filed a motion to dismiss in Maricopa County Superior Court, in the lawsuit Arizona Democratic Party v No Labels, cv2023-004832. This is the lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party to remove No Labels from the ballot. Also on April 19, the Secretary of State filed a lawsuit to dismiss. In this case, No Labels and the Secretary of State are on the same side. The Secretary of State had already determined that No Labels is a qualified party and is defending his decision in court. Here is the brief of No Labels.
The Democratic Party says the party does not belong on the ballot because its ten officers filed their declarations too early in the process. In Arizona, when a new party petitions for a place on the ballot, ten officers or persons who represent the party must file declarations. The purpose of the declarations is so that the Secretary of State knows who is in charge of the new party. The Democratic Party says that the declarations are not supposed to be filed until the petitioning is complete.
On April 21, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly signed HB 2053, which provides for presidential primaries in 2024 for parties that are already entitled to hold primaries for other office. The bill had been defeated in the House on April 3, but on April 4 the House reconsidered and passed the bill. Candidates need a filing fee of $10,000, or 5,000 signatures. They must also have filed a declaration of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.
The presidential primaries are not mandatory, but it is expected that both major parties will choose to have them. The 2024 primaries will be March 19. The bill only concerns the year 2024, and there is still no law that would provide for presidential primaries in years later than that.
On April 19, the Florida House State Affairs Committee passed HJR 129, which would change the vote needed to pass a statewide initiative from 60% to 66.67%. The only statewide initiatives that exist in Florida are constitutional amendments. There is no procedure for an initiative to merely change a statute.
All Republicans on the committee voted in favor of the bill, and all Democrats voted against it.
