On May 24, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 7050, an omnibus election law bill. Among other things, it repeals the “resign-to-run” law as applied to presidential candidates. “Resign-to-Run” laws exist in just a few states, and they require an elected office-holder to resign in the middle of his or her term, if he or she has run for another office and fails to be elected to the new office.

Without SB 7050, Governor DeSantis would be forced to resign as Governor on January 20, 2025, whether he had been elected to the presidency or not.

Law Professor Michael Dimino of Widener University has filed an interesting amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, in Mazo v Way, 22-1033. This is the case over New Jersey’s law that permits some words on primary ballots but not others. Professor Dimino has original ideas about the method that courts have been using to adjudicate election law cases over the last 40 years. Read the second half if his amicus here.

On May 23, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed HF 1830, which makes it more difficult for a group to become or remain a qualified party. The old law required a vote of 5% for any statewide office at either of the last two elections. The new law raises that to 8%. This gives Minnesota the fourth highest vote percentage in the nation for qualified status. Only Alabama, New Jersey and Virginia have higher percentages.

In addition a party must have an organization in approximately two-thirds of the counties, or alternatively in approximately two-thirds of the state legislative districts. The new law is vague about what that means.

The new definition of a qualified party does not take effect until after the November 2024 election, so for now the Legal Marijuana Now Party is still ballot-qualified and has its own primary in 2024.

There is an (old) alternate procedure to become or retain qualified status, that the party run a great many candidates. But that law requires a party to run for the statewide state constitutional offices, and those offices aren’t up in 2024, so the Legal Marijuana Now Party can’t make use of that provision. Besides the statewide offices, it requires the party to have at least 45 state representative candidates, 23 state senate candidates, and four U.S. House candidates. Minnesota has 67 State Senators and 134 State Representatives.

Minnesota allows parties to change their names. It is expected that Governor Walz will soon sign a bill legalizing recreational marijuana, so even if the state had not stiffened the definition of a qualified party, probably some of the impetus to keep the Legal Marijuana Now Party going would have receded. But there is still a federal law against marijuana and the party wants to continue in existence to fight the federal law, and it has other goals as well.

Thanks to lobbying by various minor party activists, at least the bill says, “A petition must not be rejected solely because the petition is on paper that is smaller than 8.5 inches wide by 14 inches long.”