Washington representative Skyler Rude (R-Walla Walla) has introduced HB 1826. It would delete all party labels from primary and general election ballots, except for president. It would also delete them from the Voters Pamphlet.
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Joe Kirby of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has filed a proposed initiative that will soon start to circulate. It would provide for a top-two system for South Dakota. Here is the text.
Kirby qualified an initiative similar to this in 2016, which was defeated 44.5%-55.5%. It only carried three counties, even though proponents spent $1,356,720 and opponents only spent $300,745. Most of the money in favor of the measure came from Texas billionaires John and Laura Arnold of Houston, Texas. The 2016 initiative removed all party labels from ballots for office other than president.
South Dakota has never allowed write-in voting. If this initiative were to become law, it is likely that most congressional and legislative races would feature only two Republicans on the general election ballot, and no one else, so Democrats would be largely unable to vote for a member of their party in the general election.
Under current law, independent voters can vote in Democratic primaries, but not Republican primaries. The only other ballot-qualified party, the Libertarian Party, nominates by convention. The proponents of the initiative refer to their initiative as an “open primary”, even though U.S. Supreme Court decisions and political science textbooks define “open primary” to be a system in which each party has its own primary ballot and its own nominees, but any voter is free to choose any party’s primary ballot.
On March 1, the Arizona House passed HCR 2033, which guarantees that qualified political parties may place nominees on the general election ballot. Here is the text. If it passes the legislature, the voters would vote on it in November 2024. If it becomes part of the Arizona Constitution, it would block any proposed laws that eliminate the ability of parties to have nominees, such as a top-two, top-four or top-five system.
The vote was party-line, with all Republicans voting “yes” and all Democrats voting “no” (except one Democrat didn’t vote). It passed 31-28.
The March 20 paper issue of the Star Tribune, the daily newspaper for Minneapolis, carries this letter by Edward T. J. Brown criticizing SB 1827 and HF 2802, the identical bills that change the definition of a ballot-qualified party from a group that got 5%, to one that got 10%.
Eight Rhode Island representatives have introduced HB 5721, which would move the non-presidential primary from eight weeks before the general election to the last Tuesday in August. That would move the primary two weeks earlier.
If the bill were enacted, it would also move the petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, two weeks earlier, because the date of those petitions is tied to the date of the primary. However, there would be no impact on the deadline for independent presidential candidates, because the presidential deadline is not keyed to the primary date.