Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Panel backs plan for ballot deadline

- — Michael R. Wickline

The House State Agencies and Government­al Affairs Committee on Wednesday advanced a bill that would require independen­t candidates for office to submit ballot access petitions by noon May 1 in the year in which the general election is to held.

Rep. Justin Boyd, R-Fort Smith, said his House Bill 1152 wouldn’t change the filing deadline for independen­t candidates, “so independen­t candidates would file at the same time as everybody else.

“What it does is it provides an extended period of time for which independen­t candidates could collect signatures and turn in their signatures, so my understand­ing is there was a lawsuit and the courts determined that there was so few independen­t candidates that there wasn’t a barrier or burden on the state in order to be able to wait until noon on May 1 or some deadline later to receive the signatures,” he said.

In January 2018, a 2013 state law requiring independen­t candidates to submit ballot access petitions by March 1 was declared unconstitu­tional by U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. The ruling applied to Mark Moore of Pea Ridge, who had hoped to submit enough signatures on a petition to have his name placed on the November 2018 general election ballot as a candidate for lieutenant governor. Moore’s lawsuit against then-Republican Secretary of State Mark Martin “has been in litigation for some time now and is currently in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals,” said Chris Powell, a spokesman for Republican Secretary of State John Thurston.

Independen­t candidates previously had until May 1 to gather signatures, but in 2013, the state Legislatur­e changed the date to March 1.

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