On March 17, a federal lawsuit was filed against a new Idaho law that removes student ID Cards from the list of approved types of voter ID. March for our Lives v McGrane, 1:23cv-107. The lawsuit was filed the very day the bill was signed into law. Here is the Complaint. Thanks to Democracy Docket for the link.
The MinnPost, a free alternative weekly in Minneapolis, has a lengthy story about the bills to change the definition of a ballot-qualified party from a group that got 5% for a statewide race at either of the last two elections, to 10%.
Ballot Access News
March 2023 – Volume 38, Number 10
| This issue was printed on white paper. |
Table of Contents
On March 21, the New Hampshire Senate Election Laws & Municipal Affairs Committee passed CACR9. It is a proposed constitutional amendment to say that New Hampshire shall hold the nation’s earliest presidential primary in each presidential election year. If the legislature passes this bill, the voters would vote on the amendment in November 2024.
This seems like a silly idea. New Hampshire cannot by itself guarantee that it always has the nation’s earliest presidential primary, so putting that idea into the State Constitution won’t accomplish its goal.
Illinois Senator Julie A. Morrison (D-Deerfield) has introduced SB 2306, to move the petition filing deadline for primary candidates from 106 days before the primary, to 134 days before the primary. Illinois primaries for all federal and state office are in March. If the bill became law, primary petitions would move from early December of the year before the election, to early November of the year before the election.
It is almost comical that the United States has a federal election system in which, in at least one state, a major party candidate for Congress might be required to file a petition an entire year before the election itself. In most other countries, candidates can file a few weeks, or at most a few months, before the election.
