Oklahoma Bill, Moving Petition Deadline for New Parties to March 1, Advances in House

On March 2, the Oklahoma House Rules Committee passed HB 1615, which moves the primary (for office other than President) from July to June. The bill also moves the deadline for a group to submit a petition to be recognized as a party from May 1 to March 1.

A very similar bill, SB 602, had already passed the Senate Rules Committee on February 22. As noted at this blog earlier, a petition deadline of March 1 to establish a party would almost certainly be held unconstitutional. Furthermore, HB 1615 says that a group is not permitted to file a notice of intent to circulate a party petition after January 1 of an election year. In effect, this means it will be literally impossible for a party to be recognized in Oklahoma unless it was formed in the odd year before the election year.


Comments

Oklahoma Bill, Moving Petition Deadline for New Parties to March 1, Advances in House — 8 Comments

  1. We hope that it will. HB 1058 would lower the number of signatures. It has passed the House Rules Committee unanimously.

  2. What causes the courts to pick some magic dates out of thin air — i.e. the March 1 date ???

    Separate is NOT equal.

  3. Courts have not focused specifically on March 1. All reported decisions evaluating petition deadlines for new parties that were earlier than six months before the November election have been invalidated.

    The Republican Party was founded on July 6, 1854, and went on to win a plurality in the US House of Representatives in the fall 1854 election. States with petition deadlines for new parties that are in the first half of an election year make it impossible for voters to respond to public events that occur in the middle of the election year.

  4. # 5 What makes the six months stuff so magical to the courts ??? — one more number / time period picked out of thin air.

  5. #5 About 1/3 of the representative to the 34th Congress were not elected until 1855 (the Congress did not meet until December 3, 1855), yet there were not only no Republicans elected in 1855, there were no Republican candidates.

    The only way you could claim a plurality for the Republican Party is to include persons who were not elected as Republicans (or various associate affiliations such as Anti-Nebraskans), such as free-state Whigs and Americans.

    Affiliation at the start of the 36th Congress was Democrats 81, Whigs 55, American 52, Others (primarily Republicans) 46. That certainly is not a plurality.

    Most of the Republicans elected in Illinois were incumbent Whigs. If they had run as “My Party Preference is Whig”, and campaigned as opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act they would still have been re-elected.

    The core problem is that candidates are objects of political parties. If candidates ran as individuals there would be no need for qualification of political parties.

  6. How many NONPARTISAN local govt regimes in the U.S.A. ???

    Are the party hacks trying to retake NE and make it again a party hack regime ???

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