On March 3, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon allowed HB 103 to become law. He wouldn’t sign it, but he didn’t veto it either, so it takes effect. It says no one may vote in a primary who has not been a registered member of the party for the preceding few months. The old law allowed anyone to join a party (and vote in its primary) on primary day.

The reason the Republican-majority legislature passed the bill is that in 2022, there was so much attention to the actions of registered Democrats who wanted to support Elizabeth Cheney in the U.S. House primary, and who switched their registration to Republican on primary day. Democratic registration in Wyoming dropped from 15.3% as of July 1, 2022, to 10.6% as of October 1, 2022. The primary had been in August 2022.

On March 2, the Vermont House passed HB 97 by voice vote. It moves the petition deadline for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties from August to May. It also bans “sore losers.” But the bill was amended so it no longer bans fusion.

UPDATE: this post is inaccurate. The final version of the bill does not change the petition deadline. Also the bill is now HB 429, not HB97. For more details see the blog post of March 3.

The deadline change is unconstitutional. There are approximately 30 lawsuit decisions that say independent candidate deadlines cannot be earlier than the primary, and Vermont’s primary is in August.

On February 26, Bob Richards died at the age of 97. He had been a Gold Medalist in the Olympics of 1952 and 1956 in pole vaulting, and he had been the Populist Party’s presidential nominee in 1984. He had polled 66,366 votes, and had been on the ballot in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. His best showing had been in Idaho, where he only appeared on the ballot because the Populist Party won its ballot access lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit.

The Populist Party was a new party in 1984, and ceased to run candidates after 1994, although its monthly newspaper still is published. The other two men nominated for president by the Populist Party, David Duke in 1988 and Bo Gritz in 1992, are still living.