Panel backs plan for ballot deadline

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.